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From Farm to Ferry: The Art of Charles Keller in Newburgh

Marthe Keller writes:

From Farm to Ferry: The Art of Charles Keller in Newburgh
Opening April 7, 2024
The Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands
189 Montgomery St., Newburgh, NY

We are thrilled that The Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands is opening its new season at the Crawford House with From Farm to Ferry: The Art of Charles Keller in Newburgh. The artwork in the exhibition has been donated to the Historical Society by the Estate of Charles Keller. The art on view depicts farm life and local working people, as well as a 1958 silkscreen print of the Newburgh Ferry Slip. The signed, limited edition serigraph prints will be offered at a special price during the show's run to support the Historical Society.

Click here for the complete event announcement. Calendar of Events

October 27-30, 2022

Charles Keller in the IFPDA Print Fair at the Javits --

Here is Susan Teller and her expertly curated stable of artists including luminaries Ben Shahn, Riva Helfond, and many more in her handsome booth in New York City's Javits Center.

She displayed a wall of prints whose theme is construction and construction workers. She featured Keller's 1938 lithograph Open Cut depicting the excavation of the 6th Avenue subway.

December 1-5, 2021

The Susan Teller Gallery is showing at Ink Miami, Dorchester Suites, 1850 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, FL.

"Of course we've included work by Charles," says Ms. Teller. "Warm wishes to all."

Some of this work dates as far back as 1937.

October 24-28, 2018

The Susan Teller Gallery is at the Fine Art Print Fair at the Javits Center in New York City.

"And of course Charles goes where we go," says Ms. Teller.

Check us out!

August, 2018

Works by Charles Keller are featured in the BEACHES: END OF SUMMER WRAP UP (August through September 30, 2018) exhibition at the Susan Teller Gallery. This one is Menemsha Beach, Martha's Vineyard, MA, 1957 and can be seen here.

Ms. Teller has represented Charles for decades and the Estate is proud to announce that this representation is ongoing. She writes,

As the summer winds down here are a few beach scenes to remind us of how glorious the season can be. These pieces are from the Estates of the Artists and in very good to excellent condition.

Other Keller works can be seen here and range from 1938 to 1946. The web site also offers some virtual exhibitions:

• Art About the Arts
• American Mining
• American Paintings
• Serigraphs

May, 2018

The Charles Keller Estate is proud to announce that the artworks recently aquired by the Crisp Museum of Southeast Missouri State University are now on exhibition there.

The Crisp Museum is home to the most extensive collection of Charles's work in a public museum.

Here is the Museum's announcement of this exhibition.

Photos of the work can be seen here.

April, 2017

The Charles Keller Estate announces three exciting museum aquisitions.

The family is thrilled that Charles's artwork has been aquired by the Crisp Museum of Southeast Missouri State University, the Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art of Northwestern University, Evanstan, IL, the Wolfsonian Museum, Miami, FL, and the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. The Crisp Museum is now home to the most extensive collection of Charles's work in a public museum.

April 28-30, 2016

The End of an Era on the Lower East Side

Join us for an Open Studio

For details, please click the invitation at left.

703 East 6th St (Ave. C)

Thursday April 28 5:00 - 8:00pm

Friday April 29 5:00 - 8:00pm

Saturday April 30 - 12 - 6 pm

The Keller family is pleased to present the Charles Keller collection, celebrating 43 years of continuous operation of the artist’s original loft space. The collection features his work from the 1940s, 1950s and, for the first time shown in New York, a body of work he did while living in Italy during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Please join us for a taste of the old Lower East Side in this bohemian setting with a final showing and sale of paintings, drawings and prints before the studio gives in to market forces and closes in August 2016.

RSVP to katy@keller-email.com or to colterrule@gmail.com or to marthe@keller-email.com... or just come!

Please contact Tracy Zungola, Studio Curator, at charles@keller-email.com to make an appointment for a visit or to be added to the mailing list for upcoming events.

There's a cool hip joint around the corner called Edi and the Wolf. A gang of us are going there after the show. The owner Edi Freunder lived in Charles's loft for ten years after Charles died. Order dinner and Edi will buy you a complimentary "red manhattan".

April, 2015

The Keller family is pleased and honored to announce the transfer of part of the Charles Keller archive to the Tamiment Library at New York University.

The Library is a world-reknowned repository for artifacts and documents of radical and left history. Sample images can be seen here.

This collection, named the Charles Keller Workshop of Graphic Arts Papers TAM.445, includes hundreds of his political cartoons from New Masses, March of Labor, Daily World and Peoples Daily World, dating from the 1940s through the 1980s. The collection also includes his personal papers, correspondence and ephemera as well as many original sketches, graphics and posters.

The collection of political cartoons includes Keller's multi-year series in the Peoples Daily World that can be seen at www.keller-arts.com/cartoons.

The Library is located on the 10th Floor of 70 Washington Square South (West 4th between LaGuardia and Greene Streets), New York, NY 10012.

August, 2014

Some works by Charles Keller are featured in the Summertime Show at the Susan Teller Gallery, 568 Broadway, Room 502, New York, NY 10012. 212/941-7335

January 27, 2014

We are saddened by the passing of folksinger and activist Pete Seeger. In the 1950s, Charles and Pete were neighbors and compatriots, radicals of the Left. More...

During the 1950s, Charles made sketches -- one is thumbnailed above; click to see full-size -- of Pete in action. We are considering making them available for purchase. Please contact us at charles@keller-email.com if you're interested.

June, 2013

We have learned of a major Charles Keller work acquired by an important collector (who prefers to remain anonymous). The work is the painting Buon Appetito. The collector writes, "As you can see, the English title, Sorrow of War, is not a faithful translation from Mr Keller's original Italian name. There is a deeply personal reason behind it... (More...)

The Keller Family recently received this image from Andrew Hemingway via Jill Bugajski. When, a decade ago, Hemingway was researching his book Artists on the Left, he received this slide from Charles. It depicts one of the stenciled posters produced at the Victory Workshop of the New School for Social Research in the early 1940s, during the war, headed up by Charles.

On a tip from Andrew, Jill was searching for one of these posters when she visited Charles' studio. They were not able to locate it at the time, but now she reports that she has found this poster in the collection of the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami, FL, purchased by Micky Wolfson from Ellen Sragow in the 1990s. It was sent to Sragow in one of Charles' studio-cleanings in the 1990s.

The Wolfsonian has seven of Charles' works, some purchased from him directly, others through Teller and Sragow. The curators have asked Jill to write an article about this poster, Charles and the Victory Workshop in the 1940s, to feature on their website.

Click the image to expand it.

January 2, 2013

The Keller Family is proud to announce the restoration of two lithographs from Charles Keller's acclaimed Sixth Avenue Subway Series from the late 1930s.

About his experience down in the tunnels sketching the sandhogs and their equipment, Keller wrote: "1941 was the time the United State was gearing up for entry into the war against Hitler... As a young artist I was stirred by the drama of engineering and by the dynamism of physical labor. The Sixth Avenue subway construction inspired me to record this unique building project and portray the men -- the sandhogs -- who did the work... more

Click the images to expand them. Drag a corner of the popup window to expand them further.

July 17-August 29, 2012

Early works by Charles Keller (shown here: "Boot-Leg Mine", 1938) are featured in Coal and Steel, Sources and Uses at the Susan Teller Gallery.

Showing are forty-five paintings and works on paper by more than twenty American artists including Will Barnet, James Daugherty, Hugo Gellert, James Penney, Angelo Pinto, and Ben Shahn.

Writes Susan: Coal mining and steel production, foundations of American industry, inspired artists of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. During The Depression these male-dominated industries were fraught with conflict. Were they dangerous, un-caring institutions that abused workers who were desperate for employment, or were they sources of a living wage and the dignity of a day's labor?

Much here can be traced back to Harry Sternberg and his class at the Art Students League. Sternberg was awarded a Guggenheim grant to study American industry in 1936. His monumental painting, Steel, 1937-38, is in the exhibition.

Riva Helfond was Sternberg's conduit to mines and mining communities in the northeastern, anthracite region. Sternberg made regular weekend trips, taking members of his class: Blanche, Grambs, Helfond, Axel Horn, and Charles Keller. (Winifred Lubell went once, but there had been a mining accident the day before so the artists returned home without doing any art work.) Keller also had connections to mines in North Carolina.

The show runs from July 17 through August 29, 2012, at 568 Broadway at Prince Street, Room 502, New York, NY 10012, (212) 941-7335.

Apr. 5, 2012

Charles Keller's 1987 acrylic on paper, The Weaver, is featured, and a dozen more of his works from that period are also available at the Susan Teller Gallery in a show that runs from April 5 through April 28, 2012, at 568 Broadway at Prince Street, Room 502, New York, NY 10012, (212) 941-7335 (click here for details).

The show is entitled, "Americans in Mexico" and includes the works of nine artists of major stature.

Jan. 15, 2012

Charles Keller's 1946 oil painting, Saturday Siesta, is featured by the Susan Teller Gallery at the L.A. Art Show, January 18-22, 2012, in the Los Angeles Convention Center, West Hall A.

Their web site describes it as, "...bold and exciting work from today's great artists and influential visionaries. Bringing together respected galleries from around the world, the show creates a vibrant atmosphere that examines the present while formulating the future and is committed to showing the highest quality works ranging from Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, Henry Moore, SebastiãSalgado, David Hockney, Judy Chicago, Roy Lichtenstein, Arshile Gorky, Jim Dine, Andy Warhol, Fernando Botero and others."

Susan Teller represents several prominent artists of the period termed American Pre-1950, including Keller, cataloged on her web site here.

Jan. 10, 2012

We have just learned of New Deal Art Registry, a gorgeous web site that catalogs the WPA murals. In 1939-42, Charles Keller worked with Harry Sternberg on murals for the New York World's Fair and in two US Post Offices. The latter are depicted here.

March 31, 2011

Charles Keller's studio is featured prominently in this article in the New York Post.

January 18, 2010

Works by Charles Keller are included in the group exhibition, Hot Beds and Warm Feet: Tikkun Olam (Repair the World) and the American Left -- A Retrospective Inquiry.

At the Galleries at Krasdale Foods
White Plains and New York City
(718) 387-1100 ext. 2125

The Galleries at Krasdale Foods has sponsored an exhibition and accompanying 74-page catalog that explores Tikkun Olam as a defining principle of the American Jewish Community.

This unifying principle is the basis for the artists' calls for social change prior to and during the McCarthy era, as well as the synergistic convergence with evolving American ideals and core values of contemporary society.

The exhibition opens in White Plains on January 20, 2010 and will remain on view until April 30, 2010 at which time it will travel.

The leading sources of the work in this exhibit are the Sigmund R. Balka collection at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, his personal collection and the estate of Charles Keller.

Inquiries are welcome.

June 3 - July 31, 2008

Works by Charles Keller are included in the group exhibition, Strength in Numbers: Artists Respond to Conflict.

Sragow Gallery
153 W 27th St., Room 505, New York, NY 10001  (212) 219-1793
www.sragowgallery.com

The other artists are Lou Barlow, Calvin Burnett, Elizabeth Catlett, Linga Diko, Reginald Gammon, Harry Gottlieb, Larry Heller, Jacob Lawrence, Juan Logan, Francisco Mora, Robert Morris, Lorenzo Pace, Moira Pernambuco, Howardena Pindell, Leonard Pytlak, Richard Ross, Duhirwe Rushemeza, Clarissa Sligh, Vincent Smith, James Turnbull, Anton van Dalen, Alphonse van Woerkom, and John Wilson.

British Museum -- April, 2008

A Charles Keller print is included with the current British Museum exhibition The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock. The print -- People's Meeting -- is a serigraph from 1943.

Click here to see it in the exhibition catalog.

From the web site:

The American Scene features around 150 outstanding prints by 74 leading modern American artists, including George Bellows, Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, Josef Albers, Alexander Calder, Louise Bourgeois and Jackson Pollock.

102 Charles Keller (1914-2006)

People's Meeting, 1943
Colour screenprint

Also titled Planners for Victory, Keller's screenprint depicts young patriots attending a political meeting. Unity of purpose is evoked through the use of red and blue as a common colour linking the figures. This work was included in the print exhibition America in the War organized by Artists for Victory in 1943. Keller's social realist art arose from his political activism. In 1940 he joined the Communist Party USA and remained a committed lifelong member.

Presented by the British Museum Friends and the Friends of Prints and Drawings

March 20, 2007

New York Times: Communist Party USA Gives Its History to N.Y.U. (MS Word)

Nov. 30, 2006

Charles Keller paintings, Pippo and Spectators have been acquired by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY.

Nov. 7-19, 2006

ASCA (American Society of Contemporary Artists) 88th Annual Exhibition.

Winner of the Eve Cummings Memorial Award.
Juried by Charlotta Kotik, Curator, Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum; Jeffrey Wechsler, Curator, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University; and George Billis, George Billis Gallery, NYC.

Saturday, Nov. 18, 2006, 6-8 pm

SILENT AUCTION to benefit the People's Weekly World.

Offerings include a guache by Charles Keller.

Friday, Nov. 17, 2006, 7-10 pm

Floor Thru -- Artwork by Charles Keller, Madora Frey, Jean-Pierre Roy, Rich Colicchio, Gathering

Nov. 7, 2006

Charles Keller was honored with the Eve Cummings Memorial Award for his painting "Texas Girl", exhibited at the American Society of Contemporary Artists (ASCA) 88th Annual Exhibition.

Juried by Charlotta Kotik, Curator, Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum; Jeffrey Wechsler, Curator, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University; and George Billis, George Billis Gallery, NYC.