Carroll Cloar

1913 - 1993

BiographyCarroll Cloar was born on January 18, 1913, outside Earle, Arkansas. One of four children raised on a cotton farm, Cloar was not particularly close to either of his parents. He was fearful of his father, who he would later paint as a large and intimidating man. Cloar’s mother told wild stories that would go on to influence his painting. Cloar went to high school in Earle, Arkansas, and won an art award from the James Lee Art Academy in Memphis that inspired him to pursue an art career.

In 1930, Cloar moved to Memphis to study English and Spanish at Southwestern University, and art at James Lee Art Academy. Cloar was uninterested with his studies, dropping both English and his art classes. After graduating with a degree in Spanish, he moved to New York in the hopes of becoming a cartoonist. He was unsuccessful finding steady work as an artist in the city but learned about painting at the Art Students League and discovered a talent for lithography. Following another move, this time to Mexico, Cloar began making nostalgic prints depicting his childhood in Arkansas. The Second World War temporarily interrupted his work (though he painted figures on bomber airplanes). After the war he signed with his first gallery.

In 1948, Life magazine published several of his autobiographical lithographic images titled “Backwoods Boyhood.” The article was Cloar’s first major recognition and spurred him to focus on depictions of his rural upbringing. Having moved back to Memphis in 1955, Cloar painted scenes, often in casein tempera and acrylic, inspired by memories, photographs, newspapers, memorabilia and American folklore, situated in dreamlike Southern landscapes. His career gained national acclaim, with works included in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Brooks Museum of Art, and Library of Congress. In 1993, Cloar’s painting Faculty and Honor Students, Lewis Schoolhouse was one of six paintings by American artists selected to commemorate the inauguration of President Clinton.

[Retrieved from https://www.edlingallery.com/artists/carroll-cloar/biography on 2/17/25]

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