The Crucifixion in American Art - Part 2

A recent post focused on artists included in The Crucifixion in American Art by Robert Henkes. This book 'features artists living and working in America from the mid-18th to the 21st century who depicted the crucifixion of Christ in their artwork.'

Abraham Rattner is one such and in his book on Rattner's art, The Spiritual Art of Abraham Rattner, Henkes mentions other American artists known for painting the Crucifixion that were not included in the later book. These are:

• David Aronson received an education from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, under Karl Zerbe, and began teaching at Boston University in 1955 where he was invited to direct the emerging Fine Art Department. In 1962 Aronson was appointed as a tenured professor and taught up until his retirement in 1989. Aronson daringly combined religious symbolism with figurative expressionism, capturing universal human emotions through his striking representations of Biblical allegories. Some of Aronson's media includes oil pastel, bronze casting, and pencil on paper. Known worldwide as an influential Boston Expressionist, a variety of his work is represented in over forty public collections. See here.
• Jonah Kinigstein was an artist who worked in the scorched earth tradition of such 18th- and 19th-century cartoonists as James Gillray, George Cruikshank, and Joseph Keppler, and embraced their somewhat rococo pen and ink technique as well as their penchant to exaggerate the grotesque. In the 1990s, he used to paste his cartoons to the sides of buildings in SoHo in the 1990s, eliciting a variety of responses. He was also an accomplished painter. See here and here.
• Fred Nagler was best known for his oil paintings on religious subjects. He also did wood carvings. His works were exhibited from the 1930's at the Midtown Galleries in Manhattan. His paintings and drawings are in many private collections, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City and at Southern Methodist, Vanderbilt and Temple Universities. Nagler was a serial prizewinner and considered by this peers a painter's painter. After graduating from the Art Students League in New York City, he focused his attention on liturgical subject matter. His paint handling style and pallet are reminiscent to the works of Marc Chagall. See here.
• William Pachner’s "major themes in the years that followed were the crucifixion, motherhood, and the embrace. He saw these not as specific incidents but as universal expressions of the deepest human emotions. As the interpretation of these themes grew broader, Pachner’s style became more ambiguous. Figures dissolved almost beyond recognition, with only the emotional gesture remaining.” ELIHU EDELSON (March 18, 1961) See here.

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John Tavener - Darkness Into Light.