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Date unknown, approximately 1937: The Ninth Biennial Exhibition of Water Colors is now ready for press pre-view at the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition will be opened on Friday, May 7th, with a reception and preview for members and guests and to the public the following day. It will continue on view through June 13th.

All living painters represented in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum have been invited as guests of honor for the reception on May 7th. Acceptances have been received from the following: Albert Grall, Anna Fisher, August Franzen, Philip Evergood, Harriet Blackstone, Wilford S. Conrow, Walter Pach, Jonas Lie, Walter Farndon, Jerome Meyers, Alpheus P. Cole, Charles A. Aiken, Robert Brackman, William Meyerowitz, Mary Gamble Rogers, Bradley Walker Tomlin and Anne Goldthwaite.

Woman members of the Board of Trustees of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences and wives of Trustees have been invited to act as patronesses. The following have signified that they will be present: Mrs. Sumner Ford, Mrs. Philip A. Benson, Mrs. Walter Hamrnitt, Mrs. Samuel A. Lewisohn, Mrs. Raymond Ingersoll, Mrs. Robert E. Blum, Mrs. Edward C. Blum, Mrs. W. R. Bayes, Mrs. William Howard Good, Miss Hilda Loines, Mrs. George Vincent McLaughlin, and Mrs. W.G. Warner.

About two hundred paintings are included in the exhibition. The United States, Germany, France and Mexico are represented. Selection was made by John I. H. Baur, Curator of Contemporary Art. Only specially invited papers have been hung. The papers in the exhibition, with very few exceptions, have never been exhibited before in greater New York. French and German papers were brought from abroad for this exhibition and have never been seen in this country before. Mexican papers are largely from the studios of the artists themselves and from private collectors.

Among the artists represented are:

In the American Section:. Thomas Benton, George Biddle, Charles Burchfield, John Steuart Curry, George Grosz, Edward Hopper, Georgina Klitgaard, Reginald Marsh, Karl Mattern, Barse Miller, Eliot O'Hara, Paul Sample, John Whorf, William and Marguerite Zorach. Also many other lesser known artists and quite a large group of younger artists.

In the French Section: Marc Chagall, de Segonzac, de Vlaminck, Dufy, Laurencin, Leger, L’Hote, Lurcat, Picabia, Picasso, Rouault and others.

In the German Section: Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Erich Heckel, Carl Hofer, Otto Wueller, Emil Nolde, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, also an interesting group by German painters who have been seldom exhibited in this country.

In the Mexican Section: Emilio Amero, Jean Charlot, Miguel Covarrubias, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siquieros. Also a group by the younger Mexican artists.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1937 - 1939. 04-06_1937, 093-4. View Original 1, View Original 2

May 7, 1937: The Brooklyn Museum opened this afternoon, May 7, with a reception and preview for members and guests the Ninth Biennial International Exhibition of Water Colors Artists of the United States, Germany, Mexico and France are represented.

Among those present were:

Mrs. Sumner Ford
Mrs. Philip A. Benson
Mrs. Walter Hammitt
Mrs. Samuel A. Lewisohn
Mrs. Raymond Ingersoll
Mrs. Robert E. Blum
Mrs. Edward C. Blum
Mrs. W. R. Bayes
Mrs. William Howard Good
Miss Hilda Loines
Mrs. George Vincent McLaughlin
Mrs. E. G. Warner
Mrs. Thomas E. Murray, Jr.
Mrs. D. A. Forward
Mrs. Henry S Ingraham
Mrs. Bernard Smith
Mrs. Mary Childs Draper
Mrs. Philip N. Youtz
Mr. Albert Grail
Miss Anna Fisher
Mr. August Franzen
Mr. Philip Evergood
Miss Harriet Blackstone
Mr. Wilford S. Conrow
Mr. Walter Pach
Mr. Jonas Lie
Mr. Walter Farndon
Mr. Jerome Meyers
Mr. Alpheuz P. Cole
Mr. Charles A. Aiken
Mr. Robert Brackman
Mr. William Meyerowitz
Miss Mary Gamble Rogers
Mr. Bradley Walker Tomlin
Miss Anne Goldthwaite
Miss Isabel L. Whitney
Mr. Samuel Rothbort
Miss Gertrude Schweitzer
Mr. Bertram Hartman
Mr. Frederick K. Detwiller
Mr. and Mrs. William H. Muir
Mr. and Mrs. De Hirsh Margules
Miss Charlotte Blass
Mr. William F. Walters
Mr and Mrs. Edward C. Uhlig
Mr. Edmund Morton
Dr. L. J. Morton
Mr. Edward C. Blum
Miss Anna Fischer
Mr. Jerome Meyers
Mr. Jacob Kainen
Mrs. William H. Clominzer
Mr. Joseph Newman
Mrs. George Pearse Ennis
Mr. Herbert Tschudy
Mr.William Sanger
Mrs. J. D. Wilson, Jr.
Miss R. Bowen
Mr. and Mrs. G. W. Colton
Mr. B. F. Dolbin
Mrs. Theodore Gutman
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Newman
Mrs. Samuel Rothbort
Miss Therese Bernstein
Mr. Bertram Hartman
Miss J. A. Bogue
Mr. Frederick T. Weber
Miss Dorothy McEntee
Miss Helen Ormond
Dr. and Mrs. Louis M. Dusseldorf
Mr. Alan Pope
Mr. Grant H. Code
William Zorach
Lt. and Mrs. Paul Crosley
Mr. and Mrs. Howard Morse
Mrs. Frederick Addinsell
Mrs. Jailefro

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1937 - 1939. 04-06_1937, 102. View Original

Date unknown, approximately 1937: In connection with the opening of the International Water Color Exhibition (Ninth Biennial) at the Brooklyn Museum this Saturday, May 8, (reception and preview May 7th), the Sidney Janis Collection of modern paintings will be installed in the main entrance hall of the Museum to remain on view through the summer. The collection includes The Dream by Henri Rousseau; Still Life with Guitar, Still Life, Vive la France, Seated Woman and The Painter and His Model by Pablo Picasso; Evangelical Still Life by Giorgio de Chirico; Figure in Chair by Henri Matisse; In the Grass by Paul Klee; Pipe and Book by Juan Gris; Oval Composition and Composition with Vine by Fernand Leger; Illuminated Pleasures by Salvatore Dali; Composition by Piet Mondrian; Composition by Archile Gorky; Mother and Child, Man with Hat, Moonlight Idyl, and Bathers by Louis Elseemius.

The following statement by Harriet Janis is quoted published by the Arts Club of Chicago in 1935.

"Twentieth Century painting, focused in Paris since 1907, is a record of a composite concept.

"From this time until interrupted by the war, a group of painters headed by Braque and Picasso worked in common for the purpose of submerging their personal identities in the interest of achieving a new plastic solution although personal art again entered the scene, painters still worked toward their respective objectives in groups. The pooled ideas of these various movements, when related to each other, form a new collective painting attitude.

"Cubism dissected the object, using its component parts to a reconstruct a new reality towards a two-dimensional integration. Surrealism dissected the idea or subject. Futurism multiplied the object to visualize motion. Neo-Plasticism reduced spatial conception to planes. It discarded formal perspective and light. It is the furthest point removed from Impressionism. Dada denied all values. Still it derived part of its technique from Cubist collage and transferred to Surrealism its detachment from reality. Here it became a positive force leading to the deliberate release of the subconscious.

"The collection, neither complete nor final, has attempted to select tendencies that show this interplay of attributes.

"'Tête' (Picasso 1912), in papier collé, is disciplined by poverty of material and precision of the scissors into a sharp definition of statement. This medium not only supplements the palette but introduces the surface plane, and in 'Nature Morte with Guitaro' (1913), Picasso applies the paint to the same end as the collage.

"The emphasis on construction in 'Tête' is elaborated in the Chirico, from where it is directed to Russian Constructivism.

"In Picasso's 'Artist and His Model' (1928), its complex and monumental structure in flat areas is a climax to his investigations. The dynamic impulse behind this canvas and the sublimation of Mondriaan are two extremes of similar intent. The austere Cubism of Gris is committed to the oblique. 'Viva la France' (1914-1915), besides its inventive interlocking of pianos, shows an influence of manner from Seurat and Rousseau which later developed into a profound influence of purpose.

"The affinity between the Chirico (1916) and the Dali (1929) is marked. They are similar in composition. Chirico penetrates deeply into metaphysical invention and Dali sets into the same melancholy cosmos his own memory of images intensified by his command of painting. Klee creates his contemporary hieroglyphics from an ingenious insight into a Surrealist world of mind and spirit. Curiously, the microscopic jungle of 'Im Grass' approximates the subject of Rousseau's 'LeRêve'.

"'Le Rêve' (1910) with its magnitude of poetic urge captured in primitive forms by an omniscient painting sensibility, is a sensibility which Leger, especially, drew vitality."

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1937 - 1939. 04-06_1937, 098-9. View Original 1, View Original 2