FALL 2013
Charles Griffin Farr: Formal Complexity
curated by Shelby Graham and UCSC students
catalog available
Reception: Wednesday, October 9, 5-7pm
Look for free figure drawing events with model in October!
Free Figure Drawing sessions in the Sesnon Gallery:
Wed., Oct. 2, 5-7pm
Friday, Oct. 4, 3-5pm First Friday
Wed. Oct. 16, 5-7pm
Check out our Facebook page
Mini documentary in the making for 2014 with Santa Cruz Community Television
press:
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Charles Griffin Farr was born in 1908 in Birmingham, Alabama. He studied in New York City and at the Academie Americaine in Paris, France. He taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and held figure drawing sessions in his studio on Potrero Hill. He died in San Francisco in 1997.
Mr. Farr gifted many paintings and drawings to the University Collection, some of which are currently on display at University Center, representing the full spectrum of his artistic career.
As a young artist in the late 1930s, Charles Griffin Farr took part in the Works Progress Administration programs (WPA) and trained as a restorer of ancient pottery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Farr took a special interest in the Met’s American painting tradition. Through his study of American artists like Peale, Kensett, and Eakins, Farr became convinced of a unifying character more theoretical than stylistic of an American tradition of realism. He moved to San Francisco after WWII and lived and worked on Potrero Hill.
Charles Griffin Farr was a painter in the American Realist tradition whose oeuvre has not been affected by fad or current, but through a stoic personal sojourn has created an individual painting style which assimilated his appreciation of the past with a sophisticated understanding of modernist theory and aesthetic. His influences range from classical Renaissance through 17th century Dutch painting to contemporary issues and ideas of visual perception.
Farr’s work can be found in the collections of the National Museum of American Art, Washington D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Oakland Museum of California; Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento; the University of California Santa Cruz; the Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, UT; and numerous private collections.