Seed Pods – Oil on canvas, 1950
© Elise Cavanna
A selection of both rich and dynamic paintings and textile prints by multi-faceted actress, comedienne, and dancer turned abstract artist Elise Cavanna (Elise Cavanna Seeds Armitage Welton) (United States, 1905-1963). These works are held in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from the estates of James B. and Jane C. Welton. They represent just a sampling of the multiple paintings, drawings, and textile designs donated to the museum in 2008 by the estate of Elise’s last husband (James Welton). Additional works are to be catalogued and added to the LACMA site over time. LACMA boasts they now have “the most complete collection of works by this little-known but significant early modernist.”
Statuesque (six feet tall), with purple hair and a knack for comedy, Elise (as she was known) first came to the public attention as a comic actress, partner to W. C. Fields. After studying art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and dancing abroad, she entered the new field of films, settling eventually in Los Angeles; her most famous credit was The Dentist (1932). In California she met and married the music impresario Merle Armitage. Armitage was also a collector of prints and a modernist book designer, and it was probably through him that she returned to the visual arts, working with noted printmaker Lynton Kistler on her first prints in 1932. By 1933 she had turned to abstraction and soon became one of the few non-objective artists in Southern California. In the late 1930s she gave up acting, exhibiting the oil painting Out of Space at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. She continued painting and drawing throughout the 1940s… Read more >>
Untitled – Oil on canvas, 1953
© Elise Cavanna
Grey – Paint on paper, textile design
© Elise Cavanna
Iceplant – Paint on paper, textile design
© Elise Cavanna
Fragment of Continuity – Oil on canvas, 1958
© Elise Cavanna
Staccato Image No. 1 – Oil on canvas, 1959
© Elise Cavanna
Intersected Flow – Paint on paper, textile design
© Elise Cavanna
Perspective – Paint on paper, textile design
© Elise Cavanna
Manuscript for Form & Fragment of Continuity No. 3 – Oil on canvas, 1959
© Elise Cavanna
>> Learn more about Elise Cavanna at the JLW Collection and Wikipedia.
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