DEWEY ALBINSON

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SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture -by Gautam Shah 

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E Dewey Albinson (1898-1971) was Minnesota-based American Artist, a son of Swedish immigrants. He first studied art at the Minneapolis School of Art (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design) and later, studied at the Art Students League France, on scholarship.

Albinson preferred to work around Minnesota, as he found ‘the rugged peace and solitude of the Minnesota hills to be more charming’. He spent most of the 1920-30s painting the farmsteads, towns, landscapes, and mines of Minnesota.

Albinson painted with an expressionist flavour with strong contrasting colours and bold brushstrokes. He used distinctive warm colours, such as, ‘umber, cerulean (blue), brick red, pumpkin, ochre and forest green, offset with bright pastel accents’. During the visit to Europe, the cubist style of form fragmentation and geometry influenced him.

During the depression period of 1930s, he and other artist were commissioned to paint for Public Works of Art Program (PWAP), on prescribed thematic lines ‘the figurative American scene, cityscapes, pastoral scenes’ at about $84 a piece. These art pieces with subtle patriotic flavour and high cultural relevance were placed in public buildings. 

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