Philip Evergood.

New York, NY Frederick A. Praeger: The Whitney Museum of American Art, 1960. Paperback First Edition Thus (1960); unstated. SIGNED TWICE BY THE ARTIST. First Edition Thus (1960); unstated. Very Good in Wraps: shows indications of moderate use: the binding is cocked off square; light wear to the extremities; mild rubbing to the wrapper covers; faint crease right at the lower corner tips; former owner's personal reminiscence to the upper corner of the inside front cover, which also shows shadows where a newpaper clipping or other document had been affixed the binding remains secure; the text is clean. Free of creases to the backstrip. Free of creased or dog-eared pages in the text. Free of underlining, hi-lighting, notations, or marginalia. A handsome copy, structurally sound and tightly bound, showing mild wear and minor imperfections. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. Oblong 8vo. 125 pages. 91 illustrations, some in color. Bibliography. Index. Language: English. Weight: 18.7 ounces. Published on the occasion of Philip Evergood's Retrospective Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, held in April and May, 1960. The artist's first major retrospective. Exhibition Catalogue. Paperback: Pictorial Wraps. Philip's full name was Philip Howard Francis Dixon Evergood (he was born, however, Howard Blashki in 1901 in New York City). His mother was English and his father, Miles Evergood, was an Australian artist of Polish Jewish descent who, in 1915, changed the family's name from Blashki to Evergood. Philip studied at the Art Students League of New York for a year. He then went to Europe, worked at various jobs in Paris, painted independently, and studied at the Académie Julian with André Lhote. He also studied with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17. Hayter taught him engraving. He returned to New York in 1926 and began a career that was marked by the hardships of severe illness, an almost fatal operation, and constant financial trouble. He was a painter, etcher, lithographer, sculptor, illustrator and writer. It was not until the collector Joseph H. Hirshhorn purchased several of his paintings that he could consider his financial troubles over. Evergood worked on WPA art projects from 1934 to 1937 where he painted two murals: The Story of Richmond Hill (1936–37, Public Library branch, Queens, N.Y.) and 'Cotton from Field to Mill (1938, post office in Jackson, Ga.). He taught both music and art as late as 1943, and finally moved to Southbury, Connecticut, in 1952. He was a full member of the Art Students League of New York and the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Evergood's influences include El Greco, Bosch, Brueghel, Goya, Daumier, Toulouse-Lautrec, Sloan's Ashcan paintings, and even prehistoric cave art. Evergood is noted for his deliberately awkward drawing and his spontaneous bold lines. His skillfully organized sophisticated compositions are often humorous, frequently fantastic, and sometimes openly symbolic. His color is never conventional but rather evokes an extremely personal mood that reveals the artist as both militantly social and warmly sensuous. During the 1950s Evergood departed from his established "Social Realism" style and concentrated on symbolism, both biblical and mythological. A characteristic work of this period in Evergood's life is "The New Lazarus", painted in 1954 and presently housed in the Whitney Museum of American Art. He maintained a socially conscious attitude in his art for the remainder of his career, and was in fact considered to be something of a maverick. He was a figurative painter when much of the art world placed greater value on abstraction, and he was a moralist when moralizing was not considered an option for serious painters. His best-known works are gritty, populist images of contemporary life, and are full of vitality and imagination. A blend of reality and fantasy gives his paintings an appealing, cartoonish quality, and his incisiveness as a social critic emboldens his work. His art is founded on contradiction: sophisticated intent is matched by intentionally crude technique, and tawdry overstatement is balanced with delicate lines. He was killed in a house fire in Bridgewater, Connecticut, in 1973 at the age of 72. SIGNED TWICE BY THE ARTIST.