Acrylic Paint

Wonderful early New York landscape painting by artist Alexandre Hogue who is known for his paintings involving the American Dust Bowl. Though this piece is not a depiction of that time in American history, you can see hints of his famed technique developing. Signed in lower right corner. Hung in a black and gold frame.

Alexandre Hogue, painter, was born on February 22, 1898, in Memphis, Missouri. He is best known for his paintings of the Dust Bowl of the American Southwest during the Great Depression. Other subjects that appear in Hogue's work are Native American life of the Southwest, the oil industry, farm and ranch life, and the Big Bend area of southwestern Texas. During the Depression era he produced murals in Houston and Graham, Texas, that dealt with local history. Hogue spent his childhood in Denton, Texas, and graduated from Bryan Street High School in Dallas in 1918. He then moved to Minneapolis, where he took classes at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He returned to Dallas the next year, working as an illustrator for the Dallas Morning News before leaving for New York City in 1921. When he returned to Dallas in 1925, he began to paint full-time. He also taught summer classes at the Texas State College for Women from 1931 to 1942, and was head of the art department at Hockaday Junior College from 1936 to 1942. During the 1920s and 1930s Hogue also spent much time in the Taos, New Mexico, art colony and elsewhere in the Southwest. In addition to having contact with artists like Ernest Blumenschein, W. Herbert Dunton, and Joseph Imhof, Hogue also became acquainted with the art and culture of Native American tribes of the region. Their concepts of the centrality of nature and of the human obligation to respect nature were significant in the development of his artistic philosophy. During the 1930s Hogue was associated with other Dallas-area artists such as Williamson Gerald (Jerry) Bywaters, Otis M. Dozier, William L. Lester, and Everett Spruce. All sought to express the particular character of their region, but it was Hogue's paintings of the ecological disaster known as the Dust Bowl that gained the greatest fame. With the coming of World War II, he devoted himself to defense work at North American Aviation in Dallas until 1945, when he was named head of the art department at the University of Tulsa, a position he held until 1963. In addition to his teaching and administrative duties, Hogue maintained an active exhibition schedule after the war. He continued in a realist style but now also included abstract and nonobjective elements in his work. Perhaps the best-known series is his Big Bend (1970s forward), pastels and oils inspired by the space and geologic forms of that natural preserve in southwestern Texas. Hogue retired from the university in 1968, and in 1976 the university established the Alexandre Hogue Gallery. He died in Tulsa on July 22, 1994.

H 29 in. x W 34 in. x D 1.5 in.

H 24 in. x W 29 in.