1933 - Art

Art

Painting: The Dance by Henri Matisse; The Street by French painter Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski), 25; Departure (triptych) by Max Beckmann; Apotheosis of the Family (mural) by artist-illustrator N. C. Wyeth (for the Wilmington Savings Fund Society building in Delaware); Child Psychology by Norman Rockwell (cover illustration, Saturday Evening Post, November 25). Painter-craftsman-decorator Louis Comfort Tiffany dies at New York January 17 at age 84 (his Tiffany studios filed for bankruptcy last year); Elizabeth Thompson Lady Butler dies at Gormanston, Ireland, October 2 at age 86; George Luks at New York October 29 at age 66.

Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins Museum of Fine Arts opens under the name William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts in the mansion of the late Kansas City Star editor-publisher William Rockhill Nelson surrounded by 20 acres of lawn. The trust fund set up in Nelson's will has grown to have $13 million; the museum will be noted for its Oriental collection, but the benefactor's will stipulated that no work could be purchased until the artist had been dead for at least 30 years.

Germany suppresses all modernistic painting in favor of superficial realism.

Murals: Man at the Crossroads by Diego Rivera for New York's Radio City Music Hall. When Rockefeller Center officials notice that the 63-foot-by-17-foot mural incorporates a small portrait of V. I. Lenin, Nelson A. Rockefeller asks that it be removed, Rivera refuses, the incident creates a furor in the art world, Rivera is paid in full and dismissed, his mural is destroyed the night of February 10 and its pieces carted away, Rivera uses the proceeds of the work to pay for the expenses of frescoes that he executes gratis for New York's New Workers School; Quetzelcoatl and the Old Order, The Legend of the Races, Stillborn Education, and Latin America by José Clemente Orozco for Dartmouth College.

Sculpture: The Palace at Four A.M. by Swiss sculptor-painter Alberto Giacometti, 31; Roverato by Italian sculptor-painter Marino Marini, 32; Cone of Ebony (mobile) by Alexander Calder.

Corning Glass executive Arthur A. (Amory) Houghton Jr., 26, takes over as president of the 30-year-old Steuben Glass Co. from its cofounder Frederick Carder, now 80. Corning acquired Steuben in 1918; under Houghton's direction it will produce clear, pure glass museum pieces, many of them designed by prominent artists.