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Ivan Le Lorraine Albright (February 20, 1897 – November 18, 1983) was an American magic realist painter, sculptor, printmaker, and filmmaker who spent most of his life in Chicago, Illinois. He is known for his self-portraits, close character studies, and still lifes that depict detailed and exaggerated portrayals of degeneration and acts of immorality.

Early Life

Albright’s father, Adam Emory Albright, was also a portrait painter under the teachings of famous American Realist Painter, Thomas Eakins. Subsequent from his architectural degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he also attended Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Chicago (1923) and the National Academy of Design (1924).

American Magic Realism

Ivan Albright was apart of an American art movement called Magic Realism. The term, Magic Realism, came from the book ‘’After Expressionism: Magic Realism: Problems of the Newest European Painting’’ by Franz Roh. This term coined by Roh was taken on by Italian and German painters, and was not long until it reached the United States. The American Magic Realism movement describes the eerie and unnatural realistic artworks by American artists in the 1940s and 1950s. Magic realist subject matter is not overly supernatural or extraordinary, but rather it attempts to showcase the mundane through an overly exaggerated and abnormal viewpoint.

Career

Albright developed a unique and mature style on his own which was translated into his first monumental work, Into The world There Came A Soul Named Ida. This painting is a modern vanitas painting in which it transforms a beautiful 21-year-old sitter in an old and shriveled woman full of sorrow and misery. His first one-man show was held the same year in Chicago.

Albright's works examined the idea of mortality through his portraits and still lifes. Albright once said, "Much has been made of the idea that all of nature reduces itself to a few forms. But that does not seem to me to be altogether true, and to the extent to which it is true it is not very significant. There is no third dimension in plain reality. All that we perceive is a world of surfaces." This quote is an important concept in understanding Albright's attitude toward the real world in the decipherable 2-Dimensional realm. Albright strongly believed in a world of surfaces, and expansions of that concept, in that reality can produce meaning and it is not falsified through idealization.

In 1931, Albright started his painting dubbed ‘’That Which I should Have Done I did Not Do (The Door)’’, and did not complete it until 1941. In this work, he shows the corrupt and decrepit door in a funeral house with a wreath hanging down. In 1942, he won the Temple Gold medal at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and a medal for his exhibition work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Apart from his focus on paintings, Albright also experimented with a variety of media including lithographs, sculptures, and film.

Style and Technique

It was not until the 1930s until Albright designed a meticulous and consistent technique for his works. The technique included creating numerous detailed drawings, creating his own color palette and painting with hundreds of little brushes. Albright's time consuming technique not only allowed for in depth detail of physical deterioration, but also enabled him to incorporate a multitude of slight shifts in point-of-view and highlight the relationships between the objects. Magic Realism art turned the most simple and ordinary subject into absurd and eerie subjects. Albright’s combination of extreme realism yet with a violent and lurid color pallet led art critics to categorize his work with the works of American Magic Realists.

Famous Works

Self-portrait

In Albright's self-portrait, he conveys himself in a mysterious and eerie mannerism. His use of light and illumination creates unusual shadows, further emphasizing disturbing qualities of the painting. Asymmetry and jagged lines are central part of his works, as seen in this painting. His creation of his own coloring produces disturbing and dark colors that add to his gloomy take on reality.

Woman in the Kitchen by Ivan Albright

Woman in the Kitchen

In Albright's Woman in the Kitchen, he emphasizes all of the woman's old and withering qualities by his careful brushstrokes and disturbing colors. This work is similar to many of his paintings. He purposely focused on the older men and women as subjects to show the diminishing qualities that older people hold and the ugliness and sorrow that they hold.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Ivan Albright

The Picture of Dorian Gray

One of Albright’s most notable paintings is The Picture of Dorian Gray. Albright painted this portrait for Oscar Wilde’s Oscar-winning 1891 novel. In this novel, it paints the picture of an attractive young man who becomes a youthful, handsome man at a cost of handing in his soul. Albright’s alteration of a handsome young man into one of inhumane and sickly qualities emphasizes the toll of such a calamitous act.

Personal Life

In 1946, Albright married Josephine Patterson Reeve, a renowned newspaper journalist. Albright remained with his family in Chicago for sixty-six years until moving to Woodstock, Vermont in seek of a quiet lifestyle. In the 1970s, he served as a lecturer at Dartmouth College, and remained an active artist until his death in 1983.

Other Famous Magic Realists

From Italy

• Felice Casorati • Antonio Donghi • Gian Paolo Dulbecco

From Germany

• Alexander Kanoldt

From America

• Paul Cadmus • Jared French • Edward Hopper • Eyvind Earle • Gregory Gillespie • Colleen Browing