Word: dannemora
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...field day for professional newspaper humorists. In last week's exhibition there was a little section of 25 pictures, just as inept, just as badly painted as the rest, that caused no jeers. They were the work of eight convicts at New York's bleak Clinton Prison, Dannemora...
Aside from a lavish use of color the rest of the pictures from prisons had little in common. Many were copied from postcards, magazine covers, old masters. The best had a primitive quality. Work from New York's Clinton Prison at Dannemora, where are housed the worst criminals, showed the influence of Convict Instructor Peter J. Curtis, a onetime sign painter, who exhibited two grinning putty-faced crones called A Bit of Scandal and an aproned oldster taking snuff. Other pictures included a likeness of Abraham Lincoln, a Burial of Christ, romantic portraits of women, Indian scenes, dying Cossacks...
When Peter J. Curtis was sentenced to grey-walled Clinton Prison at Dannemora, N. Y. for robbery, he was a sign-painter. Instead of planning a jailbreak, Convict Curtis found his escape on canvas, painting in the barred funnel of light in his cell. Last year the warden gave him a studio to teach other convicts his idea of escape (TIME...
...Dannemora art school, no one paints his environment. All go as far away as possible from Dannemora's stone walls. Teacher Curtis paints pictures that look like calendars in village postoffices: an Indian, a landscape, a glossily highlighted Flemish Fisher. His star pupil, Convict R. Rehm, has faithfully copied Gainsborough's Blue Boy and painted an original picture of rearing, free Wild Horses from his own dreams. Even the wild horses shine with idealism. Another pupil, Convict H. Nelson, produces pictures like railroad travel posters advertising any place but Dannemora...
When patrons of the Dannemora art group sought to hang their pictures publicly, they thought naturally of one U. S. show. That was Manhattan's famed Independents', which lets any painter hang anything except himself for $9. What was good enough for Dannemora was good enough for the 17th show of the Society of Independent Artists, opening last week in Manhattan's Grand Central Palace. Manhattan critics went gleefully, spitting on their hands for their annual field day at the expense of art they could be sure...