Victor Thall

Victor Thall (American, 1902–1982).

This work is offered unframed.

A mid-century American abstract oil, comprising complex, contiguous and superimposed linear and ovoid forms, painted with an energetic and painterly brush in primary and secondary colors in both pure and pastel tints.

Born in New York in 1902, Victor Thall first attended the Art Students League in New York City, where he studied under Arthur B. Davies, George Bellows, John Sloan and Robert Henri. He furthered his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts before leaving for Paris, in 1924, to attend the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Academie Julien. He remained in France for six formative years before returning to the United States in the early 1930s. Back in New York, he became friendly with Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky and was both influenced and inspired by the ferment of ideas that developed around the New York School during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Thall was also an active participant in the WPA New Deal Art Project of New York City between 1935 and 1939, and returned to the Art Students League as a teacher from 1947–49. He exhibited widely and with success, including at the Whitney Museum Annuals of 1949 and 1950 and the Leicester Gallery, London, in 1961. Victor Thall's paintings are held in numerous private and public collections, including the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum and the Newark Museum, and the artist is listed in all relevant reference works, including Who Was Who in American Art.

Signed lower left