Albert Henry Krehbiel (1873-1945) was the most decorated American painter ever at the French Academy, winning the Prix De Rome, four Gold Medals and five cash prizes.
He was born in Denmark (Iowa) and taught, lived and worked for many years in Chicago.
In 1879, he moved with his family to Newton, Kansas, where his father was a prominent Mennonite layman, prosperous carriage and buggy maker, and later a co-founder of Bethel College.
In the summer of 1898, Krehbiel made his way from Newton to Chicago by bicycle with his younger brother, Fred, and enrolled at The Art Institute for the fall semester.
Albert Henry Krehbiel became a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, where, in 1902, he was granted an American Traveling Scholarship to study abroad.
In 1903, he began his three years of study at the Académie Julian in Paris under history painter and muralist Jean-Paul Laurens..
Krehbiel won four gold medals at the Académie Julian (the only American ever to have done so) as well as the coveted Prix de Rome.
In 1905, he received the esteemed honor of having two of his neoclassical works selected by jury for the annual exhibition organized by the Société des Artistes Français in Paris (also known as the Paris Salon).
Returning to the United States, Krehbiel was commissioned to design and paint the mural for the wall of the Chicago Juvenile Court in 1906.
In 1907, he was unanimously awarded the commission in a national competition to design and paint the eleven wall and two ceiling murals for the Supreme and Appellate Court Rooms of the Illinois Supreme Court Building in Springfield, the state's capital.
Begun in 1907, the final Supreme Court Building mural was completed and installed in 1911.
Mr. W. Carby Zimmerman, architect of the building, considered the work done by Krehbiel to be "an example of the best mural painting ever executed in the West".
In 1918-1919, Krehbiel spent his summers at art colonies in Santa Monica, California, and in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
From 1920-1923, he spent summers exclusively in Santa Fe as an exhibiting member of the Santa Fe Art Colony.
In the summers of 1922-1923, Krehbiel was invited by the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe to participate in its Visiting Artists Program and was given a studio in the prestigious Palace of the Governors next to his contemporary, Ashcan realist Robert Henri.
Krehbiel had associations and exhibitions with the other artists of the Santa Fe Art Colony - and the Taos Society of Artists - such as George Bellows and Gustave Baumann (exhibition in McPherson, Kansas, 1918), and Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt, Marsden Hartley, and Sheldon Parsons (exhibition in El Paso, Texas, 1920).
Other notable artists that Krehbiel exhibited with during this period include William Victor Higgins, Ernest L. Blumenschein, John French Sloan, Raymond Jonson and Stuart Davis.
Krehbiel was a member of the faculty at the Art Institute of Chicago for 39 years and at the Armour Institute of Technology (later Illinois Institute of Technology after merging with the Lewis Institute) for 32 years.
In 1926, he helped pioneer the Chicago Art Institute Summer School of Painting (later named Ox-Bow) in Saugatuck, Michigan, where he spent most of his remaining summers teaching and painting.
In 1934, Krehbiel opened his own summer school of art in Saugatuck called the AK Studio.
When able to break away from his students, he would capture the surrounding rolling hills and the Kalamazoo River in oil, watercolor and pastel.
He would often visit Saugatuck in winters to portray the area in its vast and billowing cover of snow.
Throughout the years, Krehbiel painted continuously.
From his sketches and paintings done while studying in Paris and his neoclassical murals to his impressionistic American Southwest works, Chicago street and river scenes, and wooded presentations of the rural Midwest to his synchromistic figure compositions and landscapes, he painted incessantly and in all seasons without regard for the elements.
Albert Henry Krehbiel died from a heart attack on June 29, 1945, in Evanston, Illinois, while preparing for a traveling and painting trip through Illinois and Kansas.
His death occurred a few days after his retirement from teaching at the Illinois Institute of Technology, although he had agreed to stay on at The Art Institute of Chicago for one more year. | © Wikipedia
Albert Henry Krehbiel (18731945), fu il pittore Americano più decorato di sempre all'Accademia Julian di Francia, vincendo il Prix De Rome, quattro medaglie d'oro e cinque premi in denaro.
È nato in Danimarca (Iowa) ed ha insegnato, vissuto e lavorato per molti anni a Chicago.
Nel 1903, iniziò i suoi tre anni di studio all'Académie Julian a Parigi con il pittore e muralista di storia Jean-Paul Laurens.
Krehbiel vinse quattro medaglie d'oro all'Académie Julian (l'unico americano che abbia mai fatto così) così come l'ambito Prix de Rome.
Nel 1905, ricevette l'onore stimato di aver selezionato due delle sue opere neoclassiche dalla giuria per la mostra annuale organizzata dalla Société des Artistes Français di Parigi (noto anche come Salone di Parigi).
Il suo capolavoro è il programma di undici pareti decorative e due pitture murali / soffitti per la Sale della Corte Suprema e d'Appello di Springfield, Illinois (1907-1911).
Sebbene istruito come realista a Parigi, che si riflette nelle sue opere murali neoclassiche, è più noto come un impressionista americano.
Più tardi nella sua carriera, Krehbiel ha sperimentato l'arte più modernista (uno stile che è diventato noto come "sincronismo").
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