Bertram Hartman (1882-1960), an early modernist from Kansas

Abstract

This dissertation is a biographical study of the American artist Bertram Hartman (1882-1960). Hartman was born in Junction City, Kansas, to a German-American family. After graduating from high school in 1900, he studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he completed a traditional course of study in both fine and commercial arts. In 1911 he traveled to Munich, Germany, where he enrolled at the Royal Academy. There, he was influenced by the Jugendstil movement, and he developed an imaginative, decorative style of painting, as well as an interest in the integration of arts and crafts. In 1913 Hartman married Gusta Frank, whom he met in Munich. The couple then moved to New York, where they spent most of the rest of their lives. Hartman met other early modernist artists in Greenwich Village where the artistic ferment in the 1910s and 1920s encouraged experimentation in the arts. He had a gift for cultivating friendships with luminaries such as John Marin, William and Marguerite Zorach, Ernest Hemingway, Louis Untermeyer and others. Hartman was not only an easel painter, but also created batik designs and commercial art, including magazine illustrations, as well as mosaics and glass windows for New York architecture. Shortly after returning from a sojourn in France and Austria in 1925, Hartman focused his career on easel painting. He struggled financially due to the economic downturn in the 1930s and gradually his career sank into an eclipse. This study attempts to shed light on, and call renewed attention to, Bertram Hartman's career and work.