THE 1913 ARMORY SHOW
June 5, 2020

Hills & Pine by Oliver Chaffee

This is Oliver Chaffee's Hills & Pine.

The "Armory Show" was a great and imposing demonstration of the newest and most important extreme in the modern art of the time. That was in 1913. Those who are interested in art history know that it was a time of Neo-Impressionism, Futurism, Cubism, and what not. And not alone in art. In the entire world order one felt a tense and feverish suspense. In the far reaches of the civilized world signs of the first World War appeared. - Geto-Motivin - Abraham Walkowitz - 1946

A major financial contribution toward making the Armory Show come to fruition came from the Buffalo heiress Mabel Dodge who helped seed the great early century migration from Greenwich Village to Provincetown in 1915. Amongst the works of Picasso, Matisse and Cézanne were five modernist artists who would soon join the history of Provincetown art: Oliver Chaffee, Abraham Walkowitz, Marguerite and William Zorach, and E. Ambrose Webster.

June 5, 2020

The Motherlode Profile:
Oliver Chaffee

Paques by Oliver Chaffee

"It is hard to seperate Oliver Chaffee the artist from Oliver Chaffee the man. His art seems bodily lifted from his life, and symbolized in form. It is singularly pure, childlike, and yet not naive. There is in it the maturity of loveliness, and that quality was marked in his personal life. Art may be defined as the quality of childhood maintained in mature years. - Hutchins Hapgood. Provincetown Advocate - 1944