Clarence Holbrook Carter (1904-2000)

Clarence Holbrook Carter born in Portsmouth, Ohio, was an American painter.

Carter's work is found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; the James A. Michener Art Museum; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; and many others.

Clarence Holbrook Carter, well-known for his large architectural paintings and symbolic landscapes, made his early reputation as a painter of the American scene in the 1930's and 1940's.

These early drawings, watercolors and oils are realistic portrayals of rural America that sometimes express despair and loneliness spurred by the Great Depression.

Following World War II Carter's style changed. Accomplishments in the field of advertising design encouraged experimentation and abstraction in his work.

During the 1950s and 1960s, his work took on an increasingly surrealistic style with "monsters" and imaginary animals stalking fanciful landscapes.

A prominent series of the period, Over and Above, features oversized animals leering at the viewer over a wall that dominates the lower portion of his large canvases.

More recently, the Transections and Eschatos series incorporates floating, transparent ovoid shapes transposed onto architectural landscapes.

They represent the artist's conception of the human spirit striving for perfection.

Clarence Holbrook Carter (1904-2000), nato a Portsmouth, Ohio, è stato un artista Americano.

Carter studiò alla Cleveland School of Art dal 1923 al 1927 ed ottenne il patrocinio di William Millikin, il direttore del Cleveland Museum of Art.

Millikin organizzò uno studio di Carter in Italia con Hans Hofmann a Capri, in Italia, per l'estate del 1927.

Negli anni '30 e '40 era noto per i suoi dipinti dell'America rurale e per il fardello portato dalla Grande Depressione.

Entro la fine della seconda guerra mondiale aveva adottato un approccio più surrealista alla pittura.

Nel 1949 fu eletto membro associato dell'Accademia Nazionale del Design e ne divenne membro a pieno titolo nel 1964.