HOVSEP PUSHMAN PAINTINGS FOR SALE & BIOGRAPHY
HOVSEP PUSHMAN
American, 1877 - 1966
BIOGRAPHY
Hovsep Pushman was born in Dikranagerd in Armenia and began his artistic studies at the age of eleven at the Imperial School of Fine Arts in Istanbul. Pushman emigrated with his family to Chicago in 1896 — there he immersed himself in the study of Asian art, which was to serve as a significant influence throughout his career. The young artist subsequently moved to Paris and continued his studies at the Académie Julian with Jules Joseph Lefebvre, Tony Robert-Fleury and Adolphe Déchenaud. He exhibited at the Paris Salon, winning a bronze medal in 1914 and, in 1921, a silver medal for his painting The Daughter of the Sheykh, which was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In 1914, Pushman traveled back to the United States and in 1916 moved to Riverside, California, living at the city’s Mission Inn until 1919. Pushman, together with a group of California painters, formed the Laguna Beach Art Association in 1918 and in the same year he was awarded the California Art Club’s Ackerman Prize. Pushman also had memberships in the American Art Association of Paris and the Salmagundi Club, New York.
Pushman returned to Paris for several years, opening his own studio there in 1921 and began to specialize in painting mystical still lifes with carefully arranged objects from his collection. Upon his return to the United States in 1923, this time settling in New York City, Pushman set up a studio in the Carnegie Hall building. He established a close relationship with Erwin Barrie and Walter Leighton Clark, of the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York, which held several very successful exhibitions of Pushman's work. Other one-man exhibitions were held at the St. Louis Art Museum (1915) the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art (1916, 1919 and 1921), the Macbeth Gallery, New York (1920), Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 1926, the Findlay Galleries, Chicago, 1944, and the Bronxville Public Library, 1948.
An article which appeared in Time magazine in 1942, titled “Art: Highest-Priced Painter”, describes Armenian-born Hovsep Pushman’s studio: “shrouded in a velvety dimness, are all the beautiful things which Artist Pushman loves and exquisitely paints. For 20 years they have been appearing in his still lifes: tiny porcelain vases, lustrous Aegean flasks, Tibetan figurines, pieces of splendid brocade, the yellowed pages of ancient books. In his tallboy, lined with crimson plush, are row upon row of Buddhas, Oriental gods of war, of laughter, of mercy, of unimaginable things” [Time, September 28, 1942, p. 42].
Museum Collections
Amherst College, Amherst, MA
Arkell Museum, Canajoharie Art, NY
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Houston Art Museum, Houston, TX
Layton Art Gallery, Milwaukee, WI
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Milwaukee Art Institute, Milwaukee, WI
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN
Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ
Museum of Fine Arts, Boson, MA
New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, RI
Norfolk Art Association, Norfolk, VA
Philbrook Art Museum, Tulsa, OK
Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL
San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA
Seattle Art Museum Seattle, WA
Univeristy of Illinois, Springfield, IL
