Paintings on Paper

There are two annual international exhibitions of painting in the U. S. One is at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. It is held every autumn and is devoted to paintings on canvas. The other is at the Art Institute in Chicago. It is held every Spring and is devoted to paintings on paper. Visitors to the Institute's 17th International Water Color Exhibition last week found it notable for several reasons, one of which was that about half the 541 paintings shown were pure-blooded water colors. The rest of the paper paintings were in media as diverse and colorful as the crowds outside on Michigan Avenue.

About the quality of the work on hand, Chicagoans were of two minds. One mind belonged to the Chicago Daily Tribune's conservative critic, Eleanor Jewett, who reported somewhat tartly that it was "practically a complete triumph for the modernists" and "filled with bad painting." "Modernism" being a verbal shinny-can long since whanged out of all shape or precision, art-lovers went to see for themselves. Most of them concluded that the Institute's 17th, representing many of the top-flight artists of 14 nations, was indeed contemporary but well up to its lively standard.

For the first time in the history of the exhibition, the Watson F. Blair Prize of $600 was awarded to a nude, Nude, by Grigory Gluckmann, a Russian artist now living in Paris. Covered with a rosy brown wash modeled into a seated nude figure, the paper was scratched with a razor to bring out highlights and sheen of flesh. The second Blair award of $400 went to Millard Sheets, a handsome, 30-year-old Californian, for Mystic Night (see cut), which seemed "modernist" to Miss Jewett but just kind of nice to other critics.

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