Saturday, September 29, 2018

A Visit to the de Saisset Museum

Today, I visited the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University.  I thought that Ruth Dicker had shown work there and won some awards in the early 1960's, but I didn't remember the details.  It was a beautiful campus and and nice museum and some of the people there were eager to help and looked up Ruth Dicker in the computer.  They found this:

Third Annual St. Jude Juried Exhibition
September 28 - October 28, 1963
The Third Annual St. Jude Exhibition is judged by Michele Cascella, noted Italian post-impressionist, Elizabeth M. Polley, Bay Area art critic and editor, and William H. Weber, director of special art projects for the San Francisco Chronicle.  The top prizes were awarded to individual artists of four oil paintings.  Lundy Siegriest of Oakland was awarded the first prize of $600 for Summer Reflections, which is anticipated to become a part of the museum collection.  Louisa M. Jenkins was awarded second place honors for Black Madonna, third place Honors went to Ruth Dicker for Departure, and fourth place was awarded to George Neago Jr. On exhibit are fifty-five entries ranging from paintings, sculpture, and mosaics as well as twenty-five invitational works.

I thought I knew which painting was Departure, but I was thinking of the wrong piece.  I went looking through my slides and found it here.  I don't know where this painting currently resides, but it is a beautiful piece, very different from later tree works.  I looked up some older bios and they mention multiple awards from the de Saisset Museum.

I remembered this other piece, Flower Girl, which says it won first and second prize from the de Saisset Museum in 1962.  That doesn't seem to match exactly what they had in their computers, but interesting nonetheless.  This style of label is much later than 1962 so it could have been a transcription or other error.



Update: Fixed broken links.

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