Philip Evergood
Philip Evergood
1901 - 1973
American painter. He was educated largely abroad, studying art at the Slade School of Fine Art, London (1921–3), and in Paris with André Lhote and others (1924–5). After a brief period in New York, he returned to Paris in 1930 and the next year spent six months in Spain where he was much influenced by the work of El Greco and Goya. On his return to the USA in 1931, during the depths of the Depression, he married and supported his family by odd jobs while painting for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. He was a militant supporter of workers and was jailed several times for his part in strikes and protests. To attack what he saw as events of social injustice or the exploitation of the poor, he developed a strident expressionist style, which resulted in violent paintings such as the Pink Dismissal Slip (1937; Ithaca, NY, Cornell U., Johnson Mus. A.) and Don’t Cry Mother (1938–44; New York, MOMA). His first of three murals, commissioned in 1936 by the Works Progress Administration for a library in Richmond Hill, NY, was intended to glorify an ideal community of working families, although it offended many of them.
After the mid-1940s Evergood turned more towards private fantasies, some erotic, some playful, some nearly surrealist. In these his touch was lighter and his expressionist style was tempered by deliberate borrowings from naive art, especially that of children. In 1952 Evergood moved to Connecticut, where he spent the rest of his life. [John I. H. Baur. "Evergood, Philip." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T027097.]
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