SIDNEY GROSS
"HARBOR"
OIL ON CANVAS, SIGNED
AMERICAN, DATED 1950
30 X 40 INCHES
 
Sidney Gross
1921-1969
Biography from Leonard Davenport Fine Arts / LSDArt Bernard Schiff, later to become curator of the Smithsonian collection, wrote in The New York Post, "of the mature, seasoned and genuine painters … who have been working in the non objective mode for some considerable years, one who strikes me consistently as being of major size and substance is Sidney Gross."
"There is a concentration here of what I must call - paying proper respect to the words - a notable beauty; they are works of heroic force. Gross' colors are magnificent. It is not a simple question of how they look but what, in a deeper sense, they do to the mind. They activate sensation and emotion; they stimulate thought and beyond that, connection and feeling. It is senseless to attempt in specific language to describe them, since one cannot really speak of the colors by themselves. They are not to be separated from the force of the shapes, symbols, motion and, indeed events which they describe and in their effect are. Gross' paintings are dramas and sagas of experience and of feeling, descriptions at the moment of the very process of their being."
"These are extravagant words because they are meant to be. Gross is a superb artist. His soul and mind and heart are in these works. This must be how thought, feeling and sensationare at the instant of their becoming and Gross is able to give form and shape and visual materiality to these mysterious processes of the mind."
Sidney Gross showed early promise as a painter of significance. He attended the Art Students League on scholarship, and later taught there in the 1960s. He died at the height of his career. Unfortunately, unlike many of his contemporaries whose work became more valuable after their deaths, circumstances combined to obscure his work. He had no children; his first wife died; his wife of a few months donated over 100 paintings to Art Students League, which is not an exhibiting institution; his sister put an equal number in storage; the owner of the long time Rehn Gallery, which had given him almost annual solo exhibits from 1949 to 1969 died leaving no family members to take over the gallery. His assistant kept it going for a few more years.
PERMANENT COLLECTIONS Albright Art Gallery Allentown Museum of Art - 1967 American Academy of Arts & Letters - Childe Hassam Fund - 2 paintings Baltimore Museum - 1961 Brandeis University -1956 Butler Institute of American Art - 1953, 1961, 2004 Walter P. Chrysler Museum - 1960 Colby College - 1958 Columbia University - 1962 Cornell University - 1958 Corcoran Gallery of Art - 1961 Israel Museum of Art - Jerusalem - 1965 Lempert Institute - 20 paintings purchased 1948-52 James Michner Collection - University of Texas - 1967 Morgan State College - 1961 - reproduction available Norfolk Museum of Art - 1962 Oklahoma Art Center - 1968 Provincetown Art Museum -1969 Princeton Museum - before1953 Mt. Holyhoke University - 1950 Michigan State University - 1960,1966 Norfolk Museum 1961 Riverside Museum - 1959, 1963, 1966 Standard Financial Corporation 1958, 1959, 1960 Syracuse University - 1963, 1965 Washington Gallery of Modern Art - 1962 Whitney Museum - purchases 1945, 1946, 1955 University of Georgia - 1949 University of Illinois - 1959 University of Omaha - 1951 University of Maryland 1965 University of Rochester - 1966 University of Texas - James Michner Collection (date indicates when entered in collection)
SELECTED INVITATIONAL EXHIBITS Whitney Museum - multiple exhibits beginning in 1945 Armory Show - 1945 Brooklyn Museum - 1945 Metropolitan Museum of Art - 1950 Museum of Modern Art, New York - 1949, 1959, 1961 Carnegie Museum of Art - multiple exhibits beginning 1951 Corcoran Museum of Art - multiple exhibits Pennsylvania Academy of Art - multiple exhibits beginning 1945 University of Nebraska Institute of Contemporary Art - Boston - 1951 National Academy of Design - 1946, 1948 Toledo Museum of Art - 1947 Nelson Gallery - 1951 Albright Art Gallery - 1947, 49, 1951 Butler Institute of American Art - several exhibits beginning 1953 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts - 1949 Detroit Institute of Art - 1951 Milwaukee Art Institute - 1946, 1951 Joslyn Art Museum - 1954 Jewish Museum, NYC Art USA - 1958, 1959 Hallmark Traveling Exhibit - 1949 Pepsi Cola Traveling Exhibit - 1945, 1946 Washington Gallery of MA - 1962, 1966 Des Moines Art Center - 1951 Isaac Delgado Museum - 1951 Federation of Modern Painters & Sculpturors - annually from 1947-67 Audubon Artists - annually from 1949-67 American Academy of Arts & Letters - 1950, 1955, 1958 National Institute of Arts & Letters - 1967 Riverside Museum - multiple since 1957 Hallmark - National Tour - 1950-51 American Federation of Arts - National tour 1958-60 Hallmark - European tour - 1952 Brazil - Contemporary Arts - 1956 Puerto Rico - 1959 Minneapolis Art Institute - 1946
Principal sources NYTimes archives - over 100 references Archives of American Art - Smithsonian A 30 page monograph on his life and art is available from LSDArt.