Lot 473: Pr. Philip Campbell Curtis Surrealist Portrait Paintings

Two (2) Philip Campbell Curtis (Arizona/Michigan, 1907-2000) surrealist oil on panel ovoid bust-length pendant paintings of a woman with dark brown hair in Victorian dress. Both signed with initials “PCC,” lower center, and with old labels with numbering affixed to backing (nos. 929 and 930). Item 1: A woman depicted in three-quarters profile looks to the viewer’s left. She wears a brown dress with a high collar and red brooch. Item 2: The same woman, shown from behind, looks away from the viewer and toward a red hot-air balloon that floats in the blue sky at upper right. Both housed in pierced giltwood frames with brown velvet liners and gilt fillets. Both measure 2 5/8 in H x 1 7/8 in  (sight dimensions). Both frames: 6 in H x 5 1/4 in W. Biographical note: “Philip C. Curtis was born in 1907 in Jackson, Michigan. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Albion College and studied law at University of Michigan before enrolling in the School of Fine Arts at Yale University. After his training, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a program created as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, hired him as the assistant supervisor for mural paintings in New York. In 1937, he was sent by the WPA’s Federal Art Project to Phoenix to establish Arizona’s first art center. At the Phoenix Art Center, which in 1959 would become Phoenix Art Museum, Curtis created traveling exhibitions, and artist Lew Davis taught art classes. In 1939, Curtis left Arizona to help start the Des Moines Art Center, only to return in 1947 to establish his permanent home and studio in Scottsdale, where he remained until his death in 2000. Curtis, who was also a museum administrator and arts advocate, is one of Arizona’s most historically significant artists. Drawing inspiration from the Arizona desert and through the lens of magic realism, he created landscapes and figural compositions that often included Victorian-style subjects to complete his surrealist fantasies about human life and relationships.” (Source: Phoenix Art Museum)

CONDITION: Overall very good condition.