American Dreamer: The Art of Philip C. Curtis - Hardcover

Chadwick, Whitney; Ehrlich, Susan; Rand, Harry; Rubin, David S.; Tashjian, Dickran

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 155595166X ISBN 13: 9781555951665

Publisher: Hudson Hills, 1999

Curtis is a unique artist, an American original whose life and work have spanned and absorbed the art history of the entire twentieth century.

From Booklist:

Curtis was born in Michigan in 1907 but has lived and painted in Arizona for 50 years. Honored as one of "Arizona History Makers," Curtis and his meticulously crafted, charmingly enigmatic paintings have been too little known outside his region, a situation this finely produced retrospective volume seeks to rectify. Essays by five well-published curators provide a cultural and biographical context for Curtis' distinctive paintings. The surrealistic aspects of his work and the influence of such artists as ReneMagritte and Stuart Davis are noted, but the truth is, Curtis is an original. No one else has ever gazed out at the flat desert landscape of the American Southwest and envisioned it as a stage for the circus performers, musicians, and elegant figures right out of Victorian melodramas that pirouette within his dreamlike, eye-teasing tableaux. Donna Seaman