Carnegie Goes International

Twenty-one artists representing over eight countries Curated by P.J. McArdle.

Helen Bryant, England

A contemporary artist from Hastings, East Sussex, England. Helen’s work features myriad brightly-hued abstract renderings of figures, usually accompanied by her intricate ink line work. Follow Helen on Instagram @helenbryant46

Sandra Bacchi, Brazil

Ben Edge, England

Nationally acclaimed London-based artist influenced by folk art, focusing on British culture and folklore. Ben's paintings create environments of people, symbolism, and storytelling. Follow Ben on Instagram @ben_edge_art

Louis Eilshemius, USA 1864 -1941, 1937 Carnegie International

Eilshemius was the son of a Dutch father and a Swiss mother. His wealthy family lived near Newark, New Jersey. He was educated in Europe, after which he spent two years at Cornell University before beginning his art studies at the Art Students League of New York.

His early landscapes gained him little recognition from critics or the public. Around 1910, the fantasy element in his work became more pronounced, and his technique became coarser; henceforth, he often painted on cardboard instead of canvas. As his works became more idiosyncratic, so did his behavior, and he developed an unsettling habit of visiting galleries and loudly condemning the works on display. His later, visionary works depicting moonlit landscapes populated with voluptuous nymphs caused his contemporaries particular consternation due to their crudely rendered and often extravagantly smiling nudes. These are shown frolicking in forests or waterfalls, either alone or in groups, sometimes defying gravity by floating through the air. His paintings of New York rooftops are as lyrical as his pastoral scenes and like them are often bounded by sinuous "frames" he painted onto his pictures.

He was not without supporters, however. Eilshemius was championed by Marcel Duchamp, who discovered Eilshemius in 1917 and invited him to exhibit with him in Paris that year. Joseph Stella was an admirer and drew a particularly fine silverpoint portrait of him. His work was generally well received by French viewers and critics; his admirers included Matisse.

Injured in an automobile accident in 1932, he became increasingly reclusive. His health was in decline and his family fortune spent, his mental stability deteriorated in his final year, and he died in the psychopathic ward of Bellevue Hospital in 1941.

Luke Hannam, England

Follow Luke on Instagram @lukehannampaintings

John Kane, USA 1860 -1934, 1925 Carnegie International

He was the first self-taught American painter in the 20th century to be recognized by a museum. When, on his third attempt, his work was admitted to the 1927 Carnegie International Exhibition, he attracted considerable attention from the media, which initially suspected that his success was a prank. He inadvertently paved the way for other self-taught artists, from Grandma Moses to Outsider Art. Today Kane is remembered for his landscape paintings of industrial Pittsburgh, many of which are held by major museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, Carnegie Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1891, while he was walking along the B&O railroad tracks, an engine running without its lights struck down Kane, severing his left leg 5 inches below the knee. He was fitted with an artificial limb, and his disability landed him a new job with the B&O as a watchman. He was a watchman for eight years.

He left his watchman job to paint steel railroad cars at the Pressed Steel Car Company in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, on the Ohio River just northwest of downtown Pittsburgh. He began to draw on the side of railroad cars on his lunch hour to "fill in the colors". His sketched landscapes disappeared after lunch beneath the standard, solid color of the railroad car paint.

In 1925 and 1926, he submitted paintings to Carnegie Internationals, but the works were rejected. The next year, however, Kane found a champion in painter–juror Andrew Dasburg, who persuaded the jury to accept Kane's Scene in the Scottish Highlands (Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh). The newspapers trumpeted the story of the untrained 67-year-old painter's success. The publicity around the show came to the notice of Kane's wife, with whom he'd lost contact for over ten years. They reconciled and remained together during the last years of his life.

When it was discovered that he had painted over discarded photographic images purely for financial reasons, he was hounded by newspapers and unsuccessful artists who claimed him a sham. Kane continued to paint his primitive landscapes and self-portraits, including his famous Self-portrait (1929) in MoMA, New York collection. He had his first New York one-man show in 1931. Kane worked with Pittsburgh author and newspaper reporter Marie McSwigan, to write Sky Hooks The Autobiography of John Kane. McSwigan recorded Kane's life story as he told it to her during the last two years of his life.

Henry Koerner, Austria 1915 - 1991, 1945 Carnegie International

Henry Koerner immigrated to the United States in 1938, after Hitler came to power. He enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving in the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C., and London, and in 1945 was shipped to Germany to draw Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg Trials.

Koerner’s work was given the urgency in 1946 when he learned that his parents, Leo and Fanny Koerner, and brother Kurt, had died in extermination camps. In 1947, Henry Koerner caused a sensation with a show in Berlin, the first exhibition of an artist in post-war Germany and one that dealt directly with war. Returning to the United States later that year, he pursued his painting career to wide acclaim.

In 1953, Koerner settled in Pittsburgh and, until his death in 1991, divided his time between the U.S. and Vienna. Koerner painted over 50 Time magazine covers between 1955 and 1967, including covers of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. He was honored posthumously by retrospectives in Austria National Gallery and the Frick Art Museum in Pittsburgh.

Mark Krzepis, Canada

Follow Mark on Instagram @krzepism

Benjamin Kopman, Russia 1887 - 1965, 1955 Carnegie International

Painter and printmaker Benjamin Kopman was born in Vitebsk, Russia., and emigrated to the United States with his family in 1903. In 1905 Kopman enrolled at the National Academy of Art, where he remained for six semesters. His first major exhibition was at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts annual in 1914, followed by several others during the 1920s. Kopman worked for the WPA as an artist during the Depression and had solo exhibitions in the late 1930s and 1940s. His paintings and prints are distinctive for their primitive character and their use of heavy black outlines that suggest the influence of Rousseau and Roualt.

Kopman’s work is held in the collections of many institutions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Maria Laurencin, France 1883 - 1956, 1952 Carnegie International

Laurencin's works include paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints. She is known as one of the few female Cubist painters, along with Sonia Delaunay, Marie Vorobieff, and Franciska Clausen. While her work shows the influence of Cubist painter Pablo Picasso, who was her close friend, she developed a unique approach which often centered on the representation of groups of women and animals. Her work lies outside the bounds of Cubist norms in her pursuit of a specifically feminine aesthetic by her use of pastel colors and curvilinear forms. Originally influenced by Fauvism, she simplified her forms through the influence of the Cubist painters. From 1910, her palette consisted mainly of grey, pink, and pastel tones.

Her artistic accomplishments are seen in collections around the world. On the 100th anniversary of her birth in 1983, the Musée Marie Laurencin opened in Nagano, Japan. To date, the Musée Marie Laurencin is the only museum in the world that solely contains the art of a female painter. Founder Masahiro Takano was enamored with Laurencin's sensual and lyrical worldview, and the museum holds over 600 art pieces by her.

Laurencin's work is also found in The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Tate Gallery in London. Her work is also shown in the permanent collection of the Musée de l'Orangerie gallery in Paris, France, housing some of her most famous pieces.

Casey McGlynn, Canada

John McKie, England

Lives in the north of England, just about an hour from the Scottish border. John draws every day, often on packaging and found materials. “This is the only way I have found to live and work with some kind of freedom.” John has shown in Copenhagen, London, Scotland, Vienna, France, and counting. Follow John on Instagram @johnmckieart

Marina Mozhayeva, Russia

Born and educated in St. Petersburg, Russia. "I was lucky to have an extraordinary art teacher in my childhood." Scientific research in biology brought Marina to the USA in 1998. Changing focus in 2005 to making, exhibiting, and selling her art.

Merel Noorlander, Netherlands

Merel Noorlander [1984] is a Dutch artist/designer who recently graduated with a Master of Fine Art from the 4D Design Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Merel’s work navigates the space between technology, social design, and performance, where they create non-normative stories and a new format of expression within various bodily perspectives. Fundamental to their research is a focus on and aim towards collective empowerment with kinetic installations and (video) performances that interweave sexuality and contemporary objects, set in both public and private domains. They transform varied materials (paper, fiber, metals, silicone) into objects that are capable of contracting, expanding, glowing, or twisting by way of hands, motors, and timers. 

The mission is to exchange ideas on fluid spaces, transposed into a shared visual language. Looking at the public area as various physical and digital sex positive spaces, what are the different vernaculars, gestures, scents, sounds, and colors that we use to communicate with one other? How do these define, evolve, intersect, and influence on a personal and cultural level in the public realm, digital space, and physical tools that we use? 

Noorlander received a BFA from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (NL), growing up in Amsterdam’s Red-Light District amongst a self-chosen queer family. They have engaged with like-minded avatars at ITP NYU, Andersson Ranch, Prototype PGH, the Netherland America Foundation, and Prins Bernhard Culture Fund, among others. Prefers coffee in trees, challenging gravity. 

Louise Pershing, USA 1904 - 1986, 1937 Carnegie International

American painter and sculptor and a founder of the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Pershing studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), and the University of Pittsburgh. While at the Carnegie Institute, she worked with Giovanni Romagnoli and Alexander Kostellow, among others.

Pershing exhibited extensively, beginning in 1927 with the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh. One of her paintings, "Seedlings," was included in the 1937 Carnegie International, and her work was also part of the 1949 and 1950 Internationals.

She also had several solo exhibitions. Exhibition of Paintings by Louise Pershing appeared at the Carnegie Institute between March 19-April 26, 1942.

Ana Solovié, Serbia

Lionel Sumi, South Africa

South African Artist living in Zürich, Switzerland. Lionel works in a range of mixed media.

Follow Lionel on Instagram @lionelsumi

Parvaneh Torkamani, Iran Chronicles 

The paintings come from the stream of consciousness and depict everyday situations. Each stroke of the brush is an impression of something.  It could be the arch of someone’s eyebrow or the bend of their shoulder. A series of strokes create characters and the characters are in dialogue with each other. 

Parvaneh Torkamani was born in Tehran, Iran. She has lived in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington DC and Stuttgart, Germany and calls Pittsburgh home for a few years now. 

Parvaneh is the creator of Resident Persian Project, a place of poetry, theater, music and good Persian food.  Follow Parvaneh on Instagram @residentpersian

Wendy Vuman, Australia

Abraham Walkowitz, Russia 1878 - 1965, 1960 Carnegie International

Russian-American painter grouped in with early American Modernists working in the Modernist style. While never attaining the same level of fame as his contemporaries, Walkowitz' close relationship with the 291 Gallery and Alfred Stieglitz placed him at the center of the modernist movement.

He was drawn to art from childhood. In a 1958 oral interview with Abram Lerner, he recalled: "When I was a kid, about five years old, I used to draw with chalk, all over the floors and everything... I suppose it's in me. I remember myself as a little boy, of three or four, taking chalk and making drawings." In early adulthood, he worked as a sign painter and began making sketches of immigrants in New York's Jewish ghetto where he lived with his mother. He continued to pursue his formal training and, with funds from a friend traveled to Europe in 1906 to attend the Académie Julian. Through introductions made by Max Weber, it was here that he met Isadora Duncan in Auguste Rodin's studio, the modern American dancer who had captured the attention of the avant-garde. Walkowitz went on to produce more than 5,000 drawings of Duncan.

William Zimple, Australia

Follow William on Instagram @williamzimpel