John Clemmer, American/Louisiana, 1921-2014, "Tangipahoa", oil on

John Clemmer American/Louisiana, 1921-2014 "Tangipahoa" oil on canvas 1987, signed and dated "3-5/87" lower right, signed, thrice inscribed "#0611" and artist stamp en verso, printed label with artist and title on backing board, original artist wood and metal strip frame. Exhibited: "Remembrances: That Inward Eye," Tulane University President's House and Academy Gallery, Feb. 1993.; "John Clemmer: Exploring the Medium, 1940-1999," New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA, Oct. 2 - Nov. 21, 1999, Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, LA, Apr. 1 - May 28, 2000, Meadows Museum of Art, Shreveport, LA, June 10 - Aug. 13, 2000, and illustrated in the accompanying catalog, pl. 45, p. 86; "John Clemmer: New and Selected Works," Louisiana Art & Science Museum, Baton Rouge, LA, Jan. 27 - May 5, 2012. WATCH: John Clemmer Centennial: A Legacy in Art Note: John Clemmer was born in 1921 on a plantation in southern Louisiana near the small town of Donaldsonville. His father, a Wisconsin native, married a daughter of a French-speaking family which traced its presence in Louisiana back to the 18th century. In 1928, the family relocated to New Orleans, where Clemmer received a public education. Following his graduation from high school, Clemmer was awarded a scholarship to the New Orleans Art School. He moved to the French Quarter and began his studies with Paul Ninas, Xavier Gonzales, Enrique Alferez, and others. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps between 1944 and 1946 before returning to New Orleans where he resumed residency in the French Quarter and his involvement with the city's arts community. By 1946, Clemmer was Executive Secretary of the New Orleans Arts and Crafts Club – the city's first contemporary art gallery – and Director of the affiliated New Orleans School of Art. It was through classes at the New Orleans School of Art that Clemmer met his future wife, Dorothy Iker, a native of Chicago. They were married in 1953 and began spending summers at the Iker family cottage outside of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, near the shores of Lake Michigan. They later acquired the adjoining property where they renovated a second cottage and built a studio which Clemmer designed. The Arts & Crafts Club and its school folded in 1951 following the passing of its primary benefactor, the sugar refinery heiress Sarah Henderson. Clemmer's long affiliation with Tulane University began in 1951 when he accepted a position as Instructor of Drawing, Painting and Basic Design in the School of Architecture. Several years later, he taught Art Fundamentals in the Department of Art of Newcomb College, at that time the women's college of Tulane University. Clemmer remained a full-time member of the faculty of the School of Architecture for 27 years, attaining the rank of assistant professor in 1959, associate professor in 1966, and full professor in 1974. When he left in 1978, it was to become the Chairman of the Newcomb Art Department, a position he held until his retirement from Tulane in 1986 as Professor Emeritus. During his Newcomb tenure, he became the first recipient of the Ford and Maxine Graham Chair in Fine Art. Over the course of his fifty-plus years as an artist, the range of Clemmer's work was extraordinarily diverse, reflecting a restless and highly personal investigation of the modernist enterprise. Style, subject matter, and media evolved steadily over the years, and many influences and inspirations informed his work. A hard-edge geometric style inspired by Byzantine illuminated manuscripts of the fifth and sixth centuries is prominent in the large paintings of the later 1960s and 1970s, gradually evolving into the softer, more impressionistic feel that typified the work of the 1980s and 1990s, as seen in "Tangipahoa" from 1987 offered here. Of this work, Clemmer wrote on his studio label: "Another ‘joyful' work completed in one session, then turned against the wall and revisited several days later with the response ‘enough – do not touch!' Working a piece regardless of the medium is to me likened to walking up a hill or incline. One approaches the summit just enough to glimpse the ‘beyond,' then stop! If one continues there is no return, and to continue changes the work irrevocably, though, hopefully, a salvageable different work may possibly emerge. In a sense, a painting is never really ‘finished,' but at some point the piece tells you to stop working. To ignore this communication risks the losing the life of the work." A grounding in studio skills provided a solid foundation for every aspect of Clemmer's artistic journey. Figurative subject matter emerged, disappeared, and re-emerged, and Clemmer's oeuvre includes articulate pencil renderings and portraits in addition to a significant body of abstraction. In later years, an ongoing series of large-scale studies of the effects of changing light on the countrysides of Greece and Italy, where the Clemmers traveled extensively, was a major component of his output in the 1990s. These paintings complement a parallel series of canvases evocative of the rural southern Louisiana landscapes of Clemmer's childhood, and the birch forests and Lake Michigan shoreline of Wisconsin. In October of 1999, Clemmer's achievements were presented in their fullest context to-date when the New Orleans Museum of Art opened 'John Clemmer: Exploring the Medium, 1940 – 1999,' a major retrospective documenting sixty years of the artist's work with an accompanying catalogue. In 2021, The Historic New Orleans Collection presented 'John Clemmer: A Legacy in Art,' a retrospective exhibition mounted to commemorate the centennial of the artist's birth also with a fulsome accompanying catalogue. Excerpted from: "Biography." John Clemmer. www.johnclemmer.com. Accessed Oct. 29, 2026. Video link included with permission. 44 x 22 in. (111.8 x 55.9 cm.), Frame: 45 1/4 x 23 1/4 x 2 in. (114.9 x 59.1 x 5.1 cm.)

Estimate:£7,457.05

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