Theodore Czebotar

BORN: August 28, 1915, in Milwaukee, WI

DIED: 1996

Theodore Czebotar was born into a polish family in 1915 and raised in Milwaukee. He showed an interest in the arts early, becoming a prolific cartoonist and poet while in high school. He set writing aside in favor of art when art critic, Henry McBride, encourage him to do so. After a disagreement with his high school art teacher, Czebotar dropped out and rode the train out West, sleeping in cemeteries and making sketches in return for food.

Czebotar soon settled down in Denver at a hobo camp for four months and began working as a WPA mural artist under Paschal Quackenbush and for the Federal Theatre Project as a scene designer. In 1936, he shared an apartment in San Francisco with short-story writer, John Lang. During this time, he became friends with William Saroyan, an American writer, who believed the arts should be separated from commerce. Czebotar agreed with him and would continue to dislike art business, academic art, and the public’s taste for purely decorative art for the remainder of his life, regardless of his upcoming popularity.

In 1937, the artist returned to Wisconsin and transformed sketches he made while traveling, along with new images depicting midwestern life, into oil and watercolor paintings. The work created at the time caught the attention of American regionalist, John Steuart Curry. Impressed by the young artist, Curry wrote a letter of recommendation to his agent, Maynard Walker, a New York gallery owner and leader of the American Regionalist movement. By December 20, 1937, Czebotar enjoyed his first one man show at Walker’s gallery.

Between 1938 and 1940, Czebotar’s works were shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Faulkner Memorial Art Gallery, Albany Institute of History and Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. At these institutions, he exhibited alongside Curry, Edward Hopper, and Thomas Hart Benton among many other prominent artists.

After a year of going back and forth between Wisconsin and New York, Czebotar relocates to New York City. There, he becomes friends with Don Freeman, with whom he sketches theatre scenes, Altina Miranda, inventor of the popular Harlequin glasses, cartoonist, Al Hirschfeld, and Wisconsin regionalist and surrealist, Marshall Glazier.

Yearning for solitude, Czebotar purchases a small home and studio in Fishkill, New York with fellow artist Joe Jones, who was quickly called to serve in World War II. Czebotar, who was exempt from serving due to a hernia, and Elizabeth Snapper, a Dutch-born hat and hair ornament designer for Manhattan boutiques, move into the home in 1942. Inspired by his surroundings, the artist begins depicting the nature outside of his door along with portraits of Elizabeth, or Els.

The landscapes depicted by Czebotar were not restricted to upper New York state, but included the regions of the south (sketched while traveling there with Jones in 1946), the Sonoran Desert (from his travels with Elizabeth in 1947), Tucson, Mexico, Utah (where he traveled extensively from 1950 to 1954), and Maine and Canada (1959, where he stayed with American painter, Waldo Pierce). He also favored the coast of Washington state, especially that of the Olympic State Peninsula, where he made annual travels to with Elizabeth until the late 1970s. Afterward, Czebotar would continue to paint nature found around his Fishkill studio up until his death.

Czebotar was known for depicting urban and rural life, along with portraits, but is most known for his works depicting the nature and coastline found at the Olympic State Peninsula. His style, while always considered unconventional due his gesture and use of abstracted qualities, became highly abstracted when he began to paint Washington state.

Although Czebotar favored rural life after his move to Fishkill in 1942, he continued to travel to the City and show his works at a variety of venues including the American British Art Center, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and Albany Institute of History and Art. He was also part of the Wisconsin State Centennial Exhibition and the Polish American Artists Exhibition in the late 1940s.

To learn more, check out the Theodore Czebotar website https://theodoreczebotar.com/biography/. Its an excellent read!

Photo Courtesy THE THEODORE CZEBOTAR COLLECTION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Biographical Source:

“Theodore Czebotar: American Modernist.”  http://theodoreczebotar.com/biography/.