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Images
Metadata
Artist |
Biddle, George |
Caption |
Carnival in Rio |
Collection |
TMA |
Credit Line |
Gift of Sigmund R. Balka, Forest Hills, NY |
Date |
1947 |
Description |
Lithograph of two women and one male in traditional clothing dancing at a carnival. The man is in the background while the two women are in the foreground. George Biddle (1885-1973) received a law degree from Harvard University and was admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1911, though he pursued a career in art. In 1911 Biddle went to Paris to study at the Académie Julian, returning to Philadelphia in 1912 to enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Biddle returned to Europe in 1914 to study printmaking in Munich before going to Paris. In Tahiti he experimented with linocuts, woodcuts and lithotints, as well as painting colorful images of the island and its natives. Biddle's work was included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Academy of Design, the Society of Independent Artists, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Colorado Springs Arts Center, the 1939 New York World's Fair, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Associated American Artists Gallery from 1940 to 1949. Biddle became a member of artist organizations at this time such as the American Artists Group, Inc.; the Muralist Guild; the Society of Painters, Gravers, and Sculptors; and participated in the first American Artists Congress in 1936. In 1943 Biddle was appointed Chairman of the U.S. War Artists Committee and spent six months with American troops in Tunisia, North Africa recording his observations in drawings and watercolors. Many of these works were published in George Biddle's War Drawings in 1944. In 1950 George Biddle was appointed to a four-year term on the Fine Arts Commission by President Truman. Biddle spent the following year, from 1951 to 1952, as the artist-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome. He was awarded the Huntington Hartford Foundation Prize in 1954, which led him to be an artist-in-residence in 1955 at the Foundation's home in one of the canyons of Los Angeles, California. |
Dimensions |
H-11.25 L-11.5 inches |
Medium |
|
Material |
Ink/Paper |
Catalog Number |
2009.11 |
Title |
Carnival in Rio |