CARL HOLTY (1900-1973), “Architectural Capriccio” 1942

Watercolor on paper, 9 3/8 x 12 3/4 inches

Signed lower right, “Carl Holty,” and dated, “’42”

Carl Holty was awakened to his interest in art as a child through visits to the Layton Art Gallery of Milwaukee and began painting lessons with Friedrich Wilhelm Heine at a young age. Though born in Freiburg, Germany, in 1900, he was raised in Wisconsin and enrolled at Marquette University. He spent a summer at the School of the Chicago Art Institute in Saugatuck, Michigan, and set off for New York in 1920 where he studied at the National Academy of Design under Francis Coates Jones.

Critic Harold Rosenberg championed his work, and Holty became a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group, serving as their second chairman. He also lectured widely, in numerous artist-in-residence positions. He exhibited consistently until his death in 1973, including numerous showings at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In the 1940s he became more interested in biomorphic shapes akin to Miró, transforming his rhythmic compositions. Holty believed in the pliability of modern art to suit many types of visual expression—a pluralist!