William Grosvenor Congdon was an American painter who became notable as an artist in New York City in the 1940s, but lived most of his life in Europe.
17 Facts About William Congdon
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William Grosvenor Congdon was born on April 15,1912, in Providence, Rhode Island, the second child of Gilbert Maurice Congdon and Caroline Rose Grosvenor, who married in 1910.
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William Congdon was the cousin of the Isabella Gardner, the American poet and grand-niece of Isabella Stewart Gardner and second wife of the American poet-critic Allen Tate, who is spoken of in personal letters between Tate and Jacques Maritain.
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For three years, William Congdon took painting lessons in Provincetown with Henry Hensche, followed by a further three years of drawing and sculpture lessons with George Demetrios in Boston and then Gloucester.
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William Congdon served with the British 9th Army in Syria, and with the British 8th Army in North Africa, Italy and Germany: as a member of the C Platoon of AFS567 he was one of the first Americans to enter the Nazi death camp of Bergen-Belsen.
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William Congdon went to live in New York in February 1948, renting a room on Stanton Street in the Bowery.
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William Congdon began his almost-twenty-year association with the gallery with his first one-man show in May 1949, on the occasion of which he met most of the leading artists of the day, forming particularly close links with Richard Pousette-Dart and Mark Rothko.
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In 1950 William Congdon exhibited at the Betty Parsons Gallery with Clyfford Still, and in 1951 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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William Congdon had been there as a child, with his mother and brother.
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In 1959, after a trip to Cambodia, William Congdon returned to Assisi in Italy, where he was received into the Roman Catholic faith at the Pro Civitate Christiana.
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William Congdon, who had often gone back to Assisi during his travels, would write repeatedly about how, admiring and depicting the Franciscan landscape, he had uncovered the bone of his own existence; how he had learned the truth of certain values and the confidence to see himself as he was.
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In 1961 William Congdon's work was included in the Smithsonian Institution's traveling exhibition 20th Century American Painting.
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The journeys to India of 1973 and 1975 brought about another change, with William Congdon drawing inspiration from the rag-clad wretches abandoned in the streets of Calcutta, stunted human larvae without arms or legs.
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William Congdon visited North West Africa, Ethiopia, the Near and Middle East and South America.
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William Congdon was aware that this was the last decisive move of his career; there would be no more traveling to far-flung places.
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William Congdon now had to tackle a sky and earth that never seemed to change, that seemed the permanent heralds of death.
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William Congdon painted up to a few days before his death.