Biography

• Nietzsche dies and Existential Angst emerges - "God is Dead" becomes a difficult but irresistible idea in modern thought.
• Edvard Munch - "The Scream of Nature" and the rise of Expressionism, mark the decline of Naturalism and Realism in Modern Art.
• Albert Einstein and Max Plank discover Relativity and Quantum Dynamics, forever changing our conceptions of physical "reality"
• Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung interpret Dreams and rediscover the Unconscious and Collective Unconscious Mind of humanity.
• Futurism, Cubism, and Surrealism begin transcending space and time through the visual and conceptual abstractions of art.
• 1913 Internl Exhibition of Modern Art in NYC (The Armory Show) - Art world's nexus shifts from Paris to New York.

 

Vincent's parents left Poland prior to The Great War, sailing to America via steamship in May of 1912.
The Titanic sank just one month earlier, while sailing the same North Atlantic corridor.
 

• The massive devastation of modern technological warfare is surreal in its scope and intensity compared to previous wars.
• In 20 years, a Second World War will stimulate another great wave in the historic mass migration of Europeans to America.

• Modern Art, Philosophy and Science continues its 20th century emigration to America - the great "Brain Drain" of western civilization.
• An explosion in the dissemination of ideas through technological media occurs in Print, Radio, Photography and Cinema.
• Totally revolutionary modern industries mature - including the Wonders of Electricity, Horseless Carriages, and Flying Machines!

 

 

 

 

                    
                    L to R; Henry, Michalina, Vincent, and Edward c.1920      Edward, Vincent, Michalina, and Henry c.1925
 

• They lived at 86 Gold Street, on the second floor of a three family house just a few blocks from Michalina's work.
• Michalina walked to her job at The Stanley Works factory nearly every day for fifty years, until the age of 75.
   

• Vincent and his brothers also walked to Sacred Heart School - a Polish Catholic grade school located on Gold Street.
• Every Sunday and religious holiday, she and her sons walked to Sacred Heart Church to attend services.
   

Church, school, and home on Gold Street, while living in the "Little Poland" neighborhood of New Britain, CT from the 1920s into the 1950s
The Gold Street house (right) was a 6 family, 3 story brick duplex, with wooden porches on all 3 floors, front and back (porches gone now).

 

                       

The two drawings above are of the artist's mother on their Gold Street 2nd floor front porch (left one in pencil, right one in ink).
As a H.S. student Vincent donated a painting of Sacred Heart School, to the school, painted from his second floor porch.

 

 

• Vincent Smarkusz began drawing in the 4th grade of Sacred Heart School at the age of 9.
• He was a distracted student, but a favorite of the Nuns who said "he was quiet and obeyed all the rules".
• A childhood friend from Little Poland named Antoni also remembered Vincent as "quiet, but with a good sense of humor".
• All three Smarkus brothers liked to play ball and go snow sledding in the empty autoless streets of their poor neighborhood.
• They had very few toys, shared a bicycle and a baseball glove, flew homemade kites, and played "kick-the can".
   

• The US Stock Market crashed in late October - beginning The Great Depression that would last for over a decade.
• Michalina was temporarily laid off from Stanley Works.  She took in two maiden aunts as borders, and washed laundry for work.
• Her boys did whatever they could to help, by earning coins for doing painting, yardwork, and chores around the neighborhood.
• The Polish family and community was hardworking and tight-knit, helping Michalina and her boys get through the worst of times.

New Britain, CT was an industrial boomtown in the 1920s, enduring the 1930's Depression better than most.
But it's neighborhood of Little Poland was very poor, experiencing massive layoffs and factory shutdowns.

Young Vincent enjoyed the movie theaters, libraries, and museums in his area, despite the economic gloom.
 

• An extensive railway / streetcar system connected New Britain to Hartford and Boston north, and to New Haven and NYC south..
• Teenaged Vincent traveled to the Beardsley Zoo in New Haven to practice his drawings of animals, children and people.
• He visited the beaches and lakeside parks of Connecticut for the water and wildlife, and to draw people and pets at the shore.
• Pigeons were everywhere as he grew up, and had sentimental meaning to him. He later includes them in his Eden Frolic paintings.
   

New Britain had several movie theaters. and young Vincent spent hours watching Great Depression Era films coming out of Hollywood. Vincent grew up at a time in America when he could enjoy a proliferation of new forms of media - from multiple area newspapers, colorfully printed comic books and magazines, to all kinds of music and action adventure shows on radio, to live Vaudeville stage and band performances.  He then saw "movie stars" appear larger than life on an ever expanding "silver screen".
 

Exhibits and art classes at the historic Wadsworth Atheneum of Hartford, CT:

On Nov. 15, 1931 - the first ever U.S. exhibition of Surrealism "The New Super Realism" as it was called, opened at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT.  Vincent was a precocious 13 year old when he "watched" the opening, being broadcast live on WTIC Radio.

In 1934 The Atheneum opened its new Avery Memorial Wing with the first Picasso retrospective in U.S. history.  In 1936, 15 year old Vincent began attending "Hartford Art School", with evening classes being held in that very same building!

 

In just two years, Vincent will have begun taking evening art classes at the Hartford Art School - held in that very same Wing!  He was an ambitious 16 year old junior in High School at the time.

 

1935 - Public High School and the Federal Art Project
 

 

"Men and Machines" - Regionalism styled Federal Art Project "Connecticut Murals" in New Britain library, schools, and public buildings.
 

• Michalina supported her youngest son Vincent in the pursuit of an art career, even though it was very impractical at the time.
• They were still in the depths of the Great Depression, but there was light at the end of their long hard road of austerity.
• For a high school graduation present in 1938, she bought him the Kodak Brownie camera he had wanted for years.
• Vincent was seriously considering photography as one of several artistic mediums and career choices.
• He photographed animals at the zoo, birds in the park, and people at the shore, to practice drawing them at home.

 

In 1936 Vincent created a portfolio to apply for acceptance into Hartford Art School.
While a junior in H.S. he began taking evening classes in the Avery Wing of the Wadsworth Atheneum.

Upon graduation he enrolled full-time at "Hartford Art" to attain an Associates Degree.
 

• Vincent graduated from New Britain High School in June of 1938, and was art director of his senior yearbook.
• Nickname "V", he quoted Oscar Wilde in the yearbook: "Artists, like the Greek gods, are revealed only to one another"
• During his time at N.B. High, V realized that he was gay - a reality he would keep private until the 1960s in Boston.

V's High School graduation picture, and the Hartford Art School which was housed in the Avery wing of the Wadsworth Atheneum - the oldest art museum in America (est.1842).  The Museum of Fine Arts Boston and MoMA NY (est. 1909 and 1929) were in collaboration with the Atheneum.
 

Vincent told his family and friends that he was going to art school to become a "professional artist"
 

• Vincent's father had only completed the sixth grade before entering the machinist trade.
• His mother completed the eighth grade before she went to work in the Stanley Works factory
• She made sure that all three of her sons graduated from high school before entering the work force.
• Both of his older brothers went on to become successful machinists in the local industries.
   

At age 20, Smarkusz won top prize in the Hartford Courant Art Contest of 1939.

 

• First known self-portraits of the artist; Both line drawings, one in pencil and the other in pen and ink.
• Vincent began signing his artwork with the Z reinstated at the end of the family name Smarkusz.
   
• They were created at the end of his second year at Hartford Art School - just prior to his being drafted into the Army in 1941.

                          
                         Early Self Portraits at age 21 from 1940 - Pencil drawing on the left, and Pen and Ink drawing on the right.
 

After finishing two years of college, Vincent was drafted into the U.S. Army in the spring of 1941
Ten months later Pearl Harbor was attacked, automatically enlisting him for the full duration of WWII.

His career as a professional artist was put on hold for five long years.
 

                     
                        Vinny with his eldest brother Eddy in New Britain, CT in 1941 - And a picture of Vincent at gunnery school training in 1943.

Smarkusz spent time as an aerial gunner in an A-20, against Japan over the Philippines and Okinawa.
The ordeal was harrowing, creating permanant emotional and psychological changes in him.
 

• May 8th, 1945 - VE Day - The Allied forces achieved victory in Europe - Hitler was dead and Nazi Germany surrendered.e 
• Atomic bombs were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug 6 and 9, 1945.
• September 2, 1945 - VJ Day - Japan formally surrendered and World War II had finally ended.

 

• Jan 12, 1946 - Vincent Smarkusz was debriefed in North Carolina and returned home to his family in New Britain, CT.
• His brother Hank (aka Sharkey) was released from the Navy on Jan. 25, 1946 and also returned home to Little Poland.

• Vincent enrolled in the spring term of Hartford Art School at the Wadsworth Atheneum to complete his BFA.

Smarkusz displayed 32 drawings from WWII in the Hartford Art School show at the Wadsworth Atheneum.

After viewing them on a pleasant spring day in May of1946, MoMA director James Sweeney wrote:

     "Vincent Smarkusz's work adheres to the great classical tradition, of the Brueghels for example, in its overwhelming interest in materials, in objects, even in persons as objects.  Mr. Smarkusz will record with bright and loving care every rock, every shock of grass, every footprint in the muddle of tracks on the sand, the tiny pools of water.  The welter of objects stacked within, above, around, and below, will be drawn with infinite detail, a curiosity about every texture, a fondness for every fold, a response to every shape and form."

     "At the same time, the sum total of Mr. Smarkusz's work transcends the sheer craftsmanship with which he so excellently renders and constructs, even when his tools are only a fountain pen or pencil stub.  The best of them are pictures in the genuine sense, not merely etudes, because he sees all these facts with imagination, sensitivity and kindling affection.  Mr. Smarkusz's work seems to be substantially done, closely seen, thorough and inspired from the beginning.  It is a great pleasure nowadays to find an artist who regards drawing as an end in itself".

         ~ James Johnson Sweeney - Chief curator and director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
          Published in The Hartford Courant newspaper - May 10, 1946.

 

• V used the litho shop at Hartford Art School in the spring of 1946 to develop his own style of Figurative Expressionism.
• He produced images of postwar hometown life, in the form of black on white lithographs to sell at art galleries, festivals and fairs.

• Existential angst and PTSD began to manifest in Vincent's art - his images grew darker, heavier and more abstract.
• He felt a strong need to escape the prospect of another round of long, cold, commutes to work and art school all winter.
• The artist wanted to go someplace warm, to study abroad, after sacrificing an earlier art career to serve his country.

To escape the northeast winter V studied painting in Mexico, partially funded under the GI Bill

• Smarkusz studied painting at La Escuela Universitaria de Bellas Artes, in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
• Guest painters included David Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and Jose Orozco "The Big Three" Mexican muralists.
• Both Rivera and the mystical painter Frida Kahlo were very active at the time, and lived only 20 miles away!
• Vincent also visited the museums and state buildings of Mexico City where historic murals were on display.

            
            San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and the courtyard of Escuela Universitaria de Bellas Artes where Vincent studied.
 

• In Mexico, Vincent developed his painting skills in the company of the founder Stirling Dickenson, and his instructors Simon Ybarra, Helmuth Wagner and Felipe Vasquez.  Dickenson and Wagner were accomplished naturalists as well as artists. 

• Bellas Artes was forcibly closed, with its instructors arrested at gunpoint on trumped up anti-communist "Red Scare" charges.
• Instructor Siqueiros allegedly assaulted the school's owner, who used his political power to deport instructors backing Sequeros.

1946 to 1949 - Expressionist Lithographic Prints in Connecticut -  between trips to, and after, Mexico

• Smarkusz resumed studies at Hartford Art School and began promoting his services as a commercial artist.
• He produced dozens of Expressionist B&W lithographic prints from 1946 to 1949.
• One of them is named "The Funeral" - a somber Catholic scene of a burial in winter.

        

 

1950 - Smarkusz moved from CT and Hartford Art School, to MA and The Museum School of Boston

"Vincent was in his last year at Hartford Art School when I was just beginning [in 1950].  All of us younger students considered him to be the finest artist in school at that time.  He was very pleasant, not too talkative but liked to sing
'They call me Cuban Pete,  I'm the king of the rumba beat.'  Then he would laugh." 

 ~ Elsie Helena Breakey, classmate at Hartford Art School - quote from October 2012
 

• Vincent obtained his BFA degree from Hartford Art School, which had recently become an accredited 4 year college.

• In late 1950, V moved away from New Britain, CT with his sights set on Boston - after a term of study at Cranbrook Academy.

  
  Self Portraits from 1949 at age 30 - Lithographic print left, and oil painting right.                Vincent's Joy Street apartment with studio loft in Boston
 

• Smarkusz studied painting with Zoltan Sepeshy at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan during the spring of 1950.
• He admired Sepeshy's use of abstraction in the creation of cityscapes and the expressionistic quality of his human figures.
• Cranbrook Academy was also known as a preeminent American design university during the mid-twentieth century.

• Vincent moved to Boston, settling into a 4th floor apartment, with a 5th floor studio loft, at 11 1/2 Joy Street in Beacon Hill.
• He resided there for the rest of his life - twenty three and one half years - from the spring of 1951 to the fall of 1974
• He lived 2 blocks north of Boston Common park, in the Beacon Hill area, which was a haven for artists and collectors.
• His apartment was also with walking distance to night watchman job and day classes at the Museum School of Boston.
• The mystical painter and sculptor Kahlil "George" Gibran (nephew to the poet) also had a studio on Joy Street.
   
• Smarkusz worked as a night watchman at Jordan Marsh department store - and sometimes drove a taxi during the day.
• He also received a small monthly pension for his five years of service and sacrifice in the U.S. Army Air Force during WWII.
• He remained eligible for educational expense benfits on the GI Bill until 1956 - paying for his Museum School classes.

   

• Smarkusz enrolled under the GI Bill into the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (aka The Museum School).
  He studied when the school was directed by Karl Zerbe, and he familiarized himself with the Boston Figurative Expressionists painters, and the mystical painter / abstract sculptor, Kahlil "George" Gibran.

• V's work shifted away from Figurative Expressionism, towards the surreal figurations we call "Fusionism"
   

  
 

• Sketching late at night at his security guard post, Vincent began experimenting with strange metamorphoses of the human figure.
• "Fusionism" emerged as a fusion of Figurative Expressionism, Mythomorphic abstraction, and Symbolism.
• He developed this unique imagery through three distinct stages from 1952 to 1960 - his Early, Middle, and Late Fusionism.

 

• Early Fusionism
• First practiced with hundreds of India Ink on paper paintings or "brush drawings" of human and animal Mythomorphic figures.
• He then painted abstract dreamscapes in a fusion of mythical themes, sensual forms, and mystical beings.

• "Dreams and Nightmares" is what Vincent often called many of his images from the 1950's - as quoted by his brother Hank.

 

 “I visited him once when I moved to Boston.  He had already been there for some time but I don't know how long.  I saw one of his exhibits at a gallery and was quite shocked at his subject matter.  It was of strange looking fish, almost human - dozens of them!”

 ~ Elsie Helena Breakey, classmate at Hartford Art School - quote from October 2012

 

"Surreal" c. - 1954

 

• Vincent's older brother Edward suffered a sudden fatal heart attack at a golf course in New Britain, CT at the age of 41.
• His niece Christine was left fatherless at the age of 9.  Her Uncle V had lost a father figure again also, with the loss of Ed.
• Vincent was greatly affected by the emotional toll the untimely death took on his mother, and on the mother of Christine.
• He painted many pictures empathising with the family's loss - creating imagery for recovery and inspiration.

• Seasonal mood swings compelled Vincent to vacation in warm climates during the darkest days of winter.
• The fall holiday season often triggered his mania, followed by depression, which peaked in February around his brithday.
• He began to manage his depression with warm excursions - like he experienced while wintering in the Pacific and Mexico.

• Late Fusionism
• Fusionism entered it's final phase as its figures morphed into cubic fusions of human and animal Totems fused with the Earth.
• Unlike Early Fusionism which appears more fluid and lofted, Late Fusionism appears more cubic and grounded.
   

• In December of 1959, Vincent traveled to Israel to attend the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem.
• He produced 42 small paintings with Biblical themes - painting them in his Late Fusionism style.
• He displayed them in an art show at Bezalel Academy before returning to Boston in early 1960.
   

After ten years of Fusionism, Smarkusz concluded the style with a series of abstracts he painted in Israel.
 

                    
                    "Masada", 1959.

    
The Holy City of Jerusalem and the "Artist's House" at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, where Vincent stayed and exhibited his work.
 

 

In the '60s Smarkusz abandoned "Fusionism" to create "Eden Frolic" dreamscapes and "Aura View" portraits
His dark clouds of depression parted, and his art blossomed into colorful paintings of Mythic-realism.
 

• Eden Frolics - Smarkusz created paintings in a unique Mythic-realism style from 1960 into the 1970s.
• He primed smooth masonite panels and created panels laminated with linen to provide the fine surface needed for high detail work.
• His lucidly visual, mythical, and whimsical scenes proved to be good sellers at art festivals, shops, and galleries.
• His art sold well enough to finance the month long vacations to warm climates he needed to take each winter.

• Family members and friends are incorporated into the narratives of his mythopoetic dreamscapes and fantasy portraits.
• V used this bright and magical style of symbolic art to overcome the depression he felt for most of his adult life.
• Smarkusz displayed and sold paintings, prints and drawings at the Boston Arts Festivals, the DeCordova gallery, and many shops.
• He illustrated three grade-school slide presentations on Genesis, Abraham, and Jacob for The United Church Press of Boston.

 

                  
                 "Ruins of Rome" - c.1960s

 

• Aura Views -  He also painted simpler expressionist figure portraits interleaved with abstract fields of color
• These works are a harmonious combination of a sensual but abstract Figurative Expressionism and abstract Color field.

• Smarkusz continued painting detailed Eden Frolic scenes of Mythic-realism in addition to his Aura View portraits.

 

                
               "Adam" and "Eve" in Smarkusz's 1960s Mythic-realism dreamscapes.
 

• Vincent painted “Eddie with Seagulls” in his Eden Frolic mythic-realism style, ten years after his brother Edward's death.
   
• Smarkusz's Eden Frolic paintings in acrylic on linen panels continued to be popular with collectors of mystical art.
   
• He painted a "Months of the Year" series of twelve Mythic-realism dreamscape images (See Mancent Collection).

 

 Smarkusz's "Months of the Year" series - "January" (left), "June" (center), and "December" (right).
 

 

• Vincent created two of his most endearing portraits, of the two most important women in his life - Christine and his mother.
• Michalina was 73 and his niece Christine was 20 when Vincent painted their portraits in 1968.
• The artist produced relatively few life like portraits of family freinds, or himself - choosing to represent them in Mythic-realism.

 

    
    Vincent painted this portrait of his mother in 1968.  In 2011 Christine sits next to her portrait in oils by "Uncle V", also from 1968.
 

• Smarkusz had developed a following of patrons in the 1960s with his New Age Mythic-realism and abstract portraits.

• Eden Frolic dreamscapes and Aura View portraits were his final styles - both sold well in galleries and at art festivals each year.

• Quick and simple abstract Aura Views generated steady income while he created client commissioned Eden Frolic dreamscapes.

• V continued producing detailed dreamscapes and simpler abstract portraits by day, while working as "a night watchman" in Boston.
   

Vincent from 1965 to 1970.

 

• From the late 1960s until the autumn of 1974, Vincent escaped the heat of his fifth floor Boston studio each summer into fall, to enjoy long weekends in the cool Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts.  There he painted out of a second floor studio over a gallery that he helped renovate from a 130 year old barn.  It was twenty miles south of where Norman Rockwell (then in his 70s) was still painting out of his own red barn studio.

• V's new country studio reminded him of the red barn "art club" he used to frequent as a boy in New Britain, CT - when he first started dreaming of becoming an artist in the 1930s.

• The Tamarack Gallery and Artist Studios was owned by his close artist friend Mervine Chianelli - an inspired abstract figurative sculptor and owner of a beautifully renovated barn, located in Great Barrington, Mass.  The big red barn was surrounded by tall dark evergreen Tamarack trees, which turned golden every fall.
   
• Mervine exhibited and sold many of V's paintings in her gallery, along with the abstract bronze figurines she created.

• Smarkusz used her Gallery in the summer of '73 to prepare a selection of paintings for his first one-man show in NYC.

 

V's first art school as a boy, the red barn "Art Club" in CT (left), and Mervine Chianelli's Tamarack Gallery in the Berkshire Hills of MA (right).

 

Vincent Smarkusz's final show was in December 1973.  It was also his first solo show in NYC.

 

• "A Garden of Earthly Pleasure", a solo exhibit by Smarkusz, featured many selections from his Eden Frolic and Aura View paintings.
   
• The show opened at the Hermitage Gallery in NYC on Nov. 27th, 1973, and ran past its original close date to January 1, 1974.
   
• Smarkusz sold many of his most excellent and valuable paintings through the Hermitage Gallery that winter.
   

                                      
                                  "Freedom" - c. 1970 

 

On October 5, 1974 Vincent Smarkusz died at his home on Joy Street in Boston.
He was 55 years young.

   

       
       "Final Peace" - one of the last Aura View paintings Vincent created - is a dreamlike vision of his family's reunion in Heaven.

 

We the curators, like to imagine that while working in the Berkshires beneath a waning full Harvest Moon,
Vincent was suddenly lifted up to Heaven on the wings of his guiding spirits.

There were two full moons in the month of October, 1974.  The first on the 1st was the full Harvest Moon, and the second on the 31st was the full Hunter's Moon - which was also a Halloween Blue Moon on All Saints' Day (Nov. 1).

V would love the mythical idea and mystical vision of two Greek Goddesses on moonbeams escorting him up to Heaven.
Demeter the Goddess of the Harvest, and Artemis the Goddess of the Hunt.

On All Souls Day (Nov. 2), Vincent's family place candle and chrysanthemums on the graves of their dearly departed loved ones - inviting Wincenty, Edward and Vincent, to come home together for the Polish holiday of Zaduszki.

 

 

• Hartford Courant, First Prize 1942.

• Gedney Bunce "Best work of the year award" 1943

• Hartford Art School solo art show at the Wadsworth Atheneum 1946

• Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem - Student art show in 1960

• De Cordova, New England Art Show - First Prize 1961, 1962, 1966, 1968 and 1969

• Rhode Island arts Festival  - Gold Medals 1963, 1964, 1965 and 1966

• Boston Arts Festival - First Prize 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972

• Cambridge Arts Association Annual Show - First Prize 1966 and 1967

• South Shore Arts Festival  - Gold Medals 1969 and 1973

• Boston Public Library - Wiggins Collection 1949 - 1965
   
• United Church Press of Boston - Biblical illustrations 1961, 1964, and 1965
   

• Atwood Gallery, Boston
• Nexus Gallery, Boston
• Henri Gallery, Brighton Massachusetts
• Rosalyn Gallery, Rosalyn New York
• Hermitage Gallery, New York City 1973

1979 - Posthumous Exhibit - Elihu Burritt Library of Central Connecticut State College, New Britain, CT

 

Into the Future:

2000 - A New Century - and a New Millennium!

 

In the Works:

 

It is hoped that more of Vincent Smarkusz's work will be discovered and presented on this site.
Owners of his work are encouraged to contact Dr. Sushil Mehandru at 732-713-1002