Konrad Cramer certainly is one of the most influential artists ever to move to Woodstock. In his native Germany Kramer knew Franz Marc and absorbed many revolutionary ideas being played out amongst members of Munich’s revolutionary Blaue Reiter group. He arrived in America in 1912 in time for an explosion of modernist creativity that was about to unfold.
Konrad had met and married a talented American painter, Florence Ballin. The couple divided their time between New York and Woodstock, settling permanently in the art colony around 1920.
In New York Cramer participated in the famous MacDowell Club exhibitions where the American avant garde introduced their revolutionary work. A series of abstract work by Konrad Cramer brought him notoriety and the attention of Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz showed the most important American painters and sculptors in his famous 291 Gallery, but he also championed photography as a stand alone art form. Cramer was later to take up photography and collage as a major focus.
In Woodstock Cramer found plenty of company among other modernists who had moved to town in the 1920’s and 30’s. Among them were Andrew Dasburg, Henry Lee McFee and fellow Deutchlander Winold Reiss. Yasuo Kunioshi, Jules Pascin and Alexander Archipenko were also among the early Woodstockers who held considerable sway among the progressive forces in the burgeoning American art world.
During the 1930’s and 40’s Cramer was absorbed in the possibilities of photography. Cubism, Surrealism and multiple exposure techniques became important elements in his experimental efforts. The Artist frequently combined photography, drawings and other materials and created splendid photo collages.
The work in this exhibition represents a period late in Cramer’s career when he returned to painting. Ever experimental, the artist combines silver leaf, pigment and a modeling material allowing patterns of incised detail and heavily textured impasto. Combined with a hint of architectural planes this piece harkens back to his 1920’s painting/collage of Woodstock barns (see cover piece Woodstock’s Art Heritage- Permanent Collection Catalogue, WAA). - JC