John D. Graham

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For risk assessor and policy analyst, see John Graham (policy analyst).
John D. Graham
Art Students League
Known forPainting
MovementModern art, Abstract art
Spouses
  • Ebrenia Ignatevnia Makavelia,
  • Vera Aleksandrovna,
  • Elinor Gibson,
  • Constance Wellman,
  • Marianne Schapira Strate
Children4
Patron(s)
Katherine S. Dreier, Duncan Phillips (art collector)

John D. Graham (December 27, 1886,[1] Kyiv, Ukraine – June 27, 1961, London, England) was a Ukrainian–born American modernist and figurative painter, art collector, and a mentor of modernist artists in New York City.

Born Ivan Gratianovitch Dombrowsky in

London, England
.

Early life and career

Dombrovsky was born into an aristocratic family of Szlachta descent to parents Gratian-Ignatius Dombrovsky and Youzefa Dombrovsky (née Brezinska).[1] He received a classical education and graduated from the St. Vladimir University (University of Kyiv) in 1913 with a degree in law. At some point during or shortly after his studies he married his first wife, Ebrenia (a.k.a. Catherine) Ignatevnia Makavelia, and had two children, Cyril and Maria.[2] He went on to serve as a cavalry officer under Czar Nicholas II during World War I in the Circassian Regiment of the Russian Imperial army. For his efforts in the war, he earned the Saint George's Cross.

After the execution of

Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution, Dombrovsky was briefly imprisoned due to his noble class. He fled for a time to his mother's native Poland, which gained independence from the Russian Empire for a time after WWI. There he lived in Warsaw. He returned to fight in the Crimea with "the Whites", counter-revolutionaries, but decided to leave when the resistance collapsed.[3]

Immigration to the United States

In 1920, Dombrovsky immigrated to the United States with his second wife, Vera Aleksandrovna, and their son Nicholas.[4] They settled in New York City. He began calling himself John (Ivan in English) in the United States, and had his name officially changed to John D. Graham upon becoming a United States citizen in 1927.[5]

Artistic career

Still under the name Dombrovsky (also spelled Dabrowsky),

John F. Sloan, known as one of the Ashcan School
. Dombrovsky soon attracted attention for his art.

In 1925 he relocated to Baltimore with his third wife, artist Elinor Gibson, whom he met at the Art Students League.[6] They had a son David Graham. The son later married Patricia Thompson, and died in Windermere, Florida. David Graham had gone to Europe to retrieve the remainder of his father's work upon the latter’s death. Patricia Thompson Graham later gave numerous works by his father to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Other of Graham's relatively small collection of remaining works are in her sisters Kathryn and Jean's portfolios.

Mysteria 2 (1927), The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

While in Baltimore, Graham joined a group called The Modernists. He served as their secretary and exhibited in their gallery.[7] In this period, in addition to painting, Graham established himself as an art connoisseur and collector. He most notably established a collection of African art for Vanity Fair editor Frank Crowninshield.[8] Graham himself also collected traditional African art, and eventually developed part of his studio at 57 Greenwich Avenue into what he called the Primitive Arts Gallery.[9] He was greatly interested in developing knowledge of advances and changes in the art world, and kept in touch with what was taking place in Europe as well as the US.[3]

Beginning in the 1930s, Graham became associated with the

Art Students League.[10][11][12]

Graham and Elinor Gibson were divorced in 1934, and she kept custody of their son David.

That year Graham met American

Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which later developed to become the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.[14] Along with many others, Graham and his wife struggled financially during the Great Depression. They moved to Mexico for its lower cost of living, and continued to live there on and off. Wellman and Graham separated in August 1942, dividing their assets equally.[15] Wellman initiated subsequent divorce proceedings, on the grounds of "extreme mental cruelty" committed by Graham. The divorce was finalized in the state of Nevada on July 16, 1945.[16]

During the 1940s Graham married for the fifth time, to Marianne Schapira Strate. She had a grown daughter, Ileana Sonnabend, who was then married to Leo Castelli. They both became influential in the New York art world and were known as independent gallery owners and dealers.[17]

Graham served as a mentor to younger artists such as

modernists while living in Paris and in Russia. He often entertained and lectured the younger American artists in New York City about modernist ideas. He was frequently the bearer of radical new insights into art and creativity.[19]

In 1942 Graham curated a group show at the McMillan Gallery that exhibited work by Jackson Pollock (in his first exhibition in New York City), Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning, and Stuart Davis. He showed them with work by well-established European artists: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Pierre Bonnard, and Amedeo Modigliani.

Along with Stuart Davis and

Abstract expressionist generation of American painters and sculptors. He was the author of System and Dialectics of Art (1937), a treatise on art, modernism and the avant-garde.[19] It was an enormously influential text during the 1940s and supported the modernist movement.[20][21]

During this period and into the 1950s, Graham also continued to paint, developing a "unique figurative style" derived from classical forms; he was especially influenced by the works of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolas Poussin, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.[3] He signed these paintings with "Ioannus", the Latin form of John and Ivan. Among his first works in this style were paintings and drawings of Russian soldiers completed about 1943, drawn from his own experience in the imperial army during World War I.[3]

Death and legacy

Graham died of generalized reticulum cell sarcoma in London on June 27, 1961.[22]

After his death, Graham's art of his last two decades was the subject of increasing scholarly and market interest. In 1968, MOMA circulated a traveling exhibition of his works from this period, John D. Graham/Paintings and Drawings.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b "Box 1, Folder 10, Item 3 | A Finding Aid to the John D. Graham papers, 1799-1988, bulk 1890-1961 | Digitized Collection". www.aaa.si.edu. Retrieved 2021-04-24.
  2. ^ "Box 9, Folder 34 | A Finding Aid to the John D. Graham papers, 1799-1988, bulk 1890-1961 | Digitized Collection". www.aaa.si.edu. Retrieved 2021-04-24.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g "John D. Graham/Paintings and Drawings/An Exhibit Circulated by the Museum of Modern Art" (PDF). Museum of Modern Art. 1968.
  4. ^ "Box 1, Folder 5 | A Finding Aid to the John D. Graham papers, 1799-1988, bulk 1890-1961 | Digitized Collection". www.aaa.si.edu. Retrieved 2021-04-24.
  5. ^ Biographical information from A Finding Aid to the John Graham Papers, 1799-1988 by Megan McShea, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/grahjohn/overview.htm Archived 2020-10-11 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ "Artists Association of Nantucket Graham, Elinor Gibson". Retrieved 2021-04-24.
  7. ^ "Graham Stages Original Show," The Baltimore News-American (February 1926). John D. Graham papers, Archives of American Art
  8. S2CID 163404960
    .
  9. ISBN 9783791356082
    .
  10. ISBN 978-0-9851601-0-4
  11. ^ Smithsonian Archives of American Art Oral history interviews with Dorothy Dehner, 1965 Oct.-1966
  12. ^ "John Graham & Weber Furlong The Biography & Catalogue, August 7, 2012". Wilhelmina Weber Furlong Documentary Film & Biography. The Weber Furlong Press, New York.
  13. ISBN 9783791356082
    .
  14. ISBN 9783791356082
    .
  15. ^ "Box 1, Folder 7 | A Finding Aid to the John D. Graham papers, 1799-1988, bulk 1890-1961 | Digitized Collection". www.aaa.si.edu. Retrieved 2021-04-24.
  16. ^ John D. Graham papers, 1799-1988, bulk 1890-1961, Smithsonian Archives of American Art [1]
  17. ^ Smith, Roberta. "Ileana Sonnabend, Art World Figure, Dies at 92." New York Times, October 24, 2007.
  18. ^ Charles Darwent (October 27, 2007), Ileana Sonnabend - Queen of the SoHo art world The Independent.
  19. ^ a b [2] New York Times review by Grace Glueck, November 11, 1984, accessed online July 12, 2007
  20. ^ "John D. Graham - Bio". Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2007-07-12. accessed online July 12, 2007
  21. ^ "M B F A- Mark Borghi Fine Art Inc - American Art - John D. Graham (1886 - 1961)". Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2007-07-12. accessed online July 12, 2007
  22. ^ "Box 1, Folder 13 | A Finding Aid to the John D. Graham papers, 1799-1988, bulk 1890-1961 | Digitized Collection". www.aaa.si.edu. Retrieved 2021-04-24.

External links

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