biography of Manierre DAWSON (1887-1969)

Birth place: Chicago, IL

Addresses: Chicago, IL, through 1914; Ludington, MI, 1914-on

Profession: Painter, sculptor

Studied: Armour Inst. of Tech., Chicago, 1909 (civil engineering)

Exhibited: Armory Show, 1913 (Chicago only); Montross Gal., NYC, 1914; The Fourteen," Detroit, 1914; Milwaukee Art Soc., 1914; S.Indp.A.; M. Diamond FA, NYC, 1982"

Work: Milwaukee Art Ctr; Ringling Mus. of Art, Sarasota, FL (including his journal in which he recorded details of his Europe trip and his artistic theories); Univ. of Texas, Michener Collection; Hirshhorn Mus.

Comments: One of the earliest American modernists to explore non-objective abstraction. He began his career as an architectural draftsman, going to work in 1909 for the firm of Holabird and Roche, although he was also painting at the same time, having begun a series of abstract paintings that bear comparison with Kandinsky's first non-objective works. Dawson traveled to Europe in 1910, visiting Siena, Munich, Dresden, Berlin, and Paris. In the latter city he met Gertrude Stein who purchased one of his paintings. Returning to Chicago in late 1910, he continued his pursuit of abstraction and became friendly with Walter Pach, who arranged for one of his paintings (a non-objective work, Wharf Under Mountain") to be hung at the Chicago Armory Show when it opened there in 1913. Dawson also took up sculpture about this time and abandoned architecture permanently in 1914. Although he participated in several exhibitions in 1914, financial problems and his resentment over the ridicule of modernistic art by contemporary critics, caused him to virtually abandon art after 1914. About this time, he and his family moved to Ludington, Michigan, where he practiced fruit farming for many years.

Sources: A. Davidson, Early American Modernist Painting, 1910-1935 262-66; W. Homer, Avant-Garde Painting and Sculpture in America, 58; Diamond, Thirty-Five American Modernists p.61; Brown, The Story of the Armory Show. 213, 232; Baigell, Dictionary.