ARTIST: George Maillard Kesslere (New York, 1894 - 1979)
NAME: Two Dancing Nudes
MEDIUM: pastel on paper. Paper applied to board.
CONDITION: Some bubbling. Some water damage along upper edge. Minor damages to edges and corners (see pictures carefully).
SIGHT SIZE: 23 x 19 inches / 58 x 48 cm
FRAME SIZE: unframed
SIGNATURE: lower right
CATEGORY: antique vintage painting
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SKU#: 118094
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BIOGRAPHY:
George Maillard Kesslere was an artist and photographer of many famous personalities. Following his training as an artist, Kesslere ran a studio in Syracuse, N. Y., where he made portrait paintings and photographs. In 1921, he moved to New York City to pursue a position as art editor for the magazine The Debutante. In New York, his paintings and pastels of thinly draped, female nudes, captured in motion, gained the attention of theatrical producer Earl Carroll. He hired Kesslere as a photographer in 1928, and published his paintings and photos in programs for his Vanites series of musicals. In the early 1920s, Kesslere set up a photography studio in Manhattan, where he made portraits of thousands of well-known figures. His subjects included people involved in almost every aspect of the entertainment arts. In 1935, Kesslere exhibited 500 of his photographs, paintings and drawings in the Patricia Lounge of the Loew's Ziegfeld Theater, located on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. Kesslere also collaborated on various book projects, including the 1940 Women of Achievement; Biographies and Portraits of Outstanding American Women. In 1947, an exhibition of Kesslere's work entitled Stars of Yesterday and Today, sponsored by the Theatre Library Association, toured the United States. In 1952, Kesslere donated a collection of his portraits of major entertainment and performing arts personalities, amassed mostly from 1925-1946, to the Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library. The artist and photographer died in Cresskill, N. J. in 1979 at the age of 84.