Painting, New York, January 1936
Charles Biederman
CHARLES BIEDERMAN, 1936. OIL ON LINEN.
Ideologically absolute and socially difficult, Charles Biederman rose through the ranks of American artistic society quickly. He gained recognition for technical skill and conceptual ideation but with it, a reputation for being difficult to work with. He dropped out of school, fell out with curators and gallerists, abandoned artists and influences in a strong-headed search for artistic truth. In 1936, he was being touted as one of the key players of American Modern Art but by 1937 he had all but abandoned the style that had brought his acclaim. The painting here, full of loose, naturalistic forms and anthropomorphised shaped would later be rejected by Biederman and replaced with strict geometry. There was, he thought, an incompatibility with the modern world of mathematical rigour and the depiction of biological shapes, a so called ‘conflict of forms’ of which he fell on the geometric side. Not long after, Biederman would reject painting altogether, instead working in three dimensional reliefs and mixed media collages to communicate his ideas of the modern world. Biederman was restless and cocksure, paying little attention to social convention or norms in pursuit of greatness. He found it.