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Property from the Collection of Elizabeth Medearis
At the age of 18, Roger Medearis enrolled at the Kansas City Art Institute under the tutelage of the highly celebrated Regionalist master, Thomas Hart Benton. Like Benton, Medearis shunned the popular European taste for abstraction and instead drew inspiration from everyday life. Everyday life, in Medearis' case, consisted of the farms and people of rural Missouri. After years of working in a Regionalist style, all the while finding the market for Regionalism to be slowly declining, Medearis took a hiatus from painting and instead, joined the corporate world. In the early 1960s, after several years away from painting, Medearis again took up his paint brush and devoted himself entirely to his craft. This later work still reflected his Regionalist foundation, but Medearis also began to incorporate aspects of his new life in California, which focused more on burgeoning West Coast culture and the vastly different landscape.
Christie's is delighted to offer two works on behalf of the Medearis family.
Roger Norman Medearis (1920-2001)
Arrangement of Old Things
Details
Roger Norman Medearis (1920-2001)
Arrangement of Old Things
signed and dated 'Medearis 1950' (lower right)--dated again and inscribed with title (on the reverse)
tempera on masonite
18 x 12¼ in. (45.7 x 31.1 cm.)
Painted in 1950.
Arrangement of Old Things
signed and dated 'Medearis 1950' (lower right)--dated again and inscribed with title (on the reverse)
tempera on masonite
18 x 12¼ in. (45.7 x 31.1 cm.)
Painted in 1950.
Provenance
The artist.
By descent to the present owner.
By descent to the present owner.
Literature
The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, The Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Roger Medearis: His Regionalism, exhibition pamphlet, San Marino, California, 2012, n.p., illustrated.
Exhibited
San Marino, California, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, The Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Roger Medearis: His Regionalism, June 16-September 17, 2012.
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