Salcia Bahnc

Polish, American (1898 - 1976)

"The art of Salcia Bahnc is a sincere manifestation of the spirit we know as Modernism...

She is the spirit of the age, not its fashion."

After her family emmigrated from Poland to the United States in the early 20th Century, Salcia Bahnc (Polish, American, 1898 - 1976) cultivated her artistic skill from a young age. By day, she worked in a department store to support her night classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She studied painting and fashion design and began teaching at SAIC upon her graduation in 1923 until 1929.

Her prescient modernist style, with vibrant colors and bold presentation of figures, lent to a successful international career. Bahnc's work is collected by museums and institutions, such as the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois and the Princeton Art Museum in New Jersey.

Salcia Bahnc (Polish, American, 1898 - 1976) Nudes Oil on Canvas 14 x 18 inches Signed Lower Center AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE

As a young woman living in Chicago, Salcia Bahnc's neighborhood on East Ontario Street was teeming with artists and studios including including James Allen Saint-John (1872-1957), Paul Bartlett (1881-1965), Pauline Palmer (1867-1938), and George Ames Aldrich (1872-1941).

Between 1919 - 1929, Bahnc was included in several musuem exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago. It was during this time int hat her vibrant, modernist compositions began garnering a significant amount of attention, from critics and galleries.

Bahnc's work was the subject of much praise. Ida Ethelwyn Wing reported in a volume of the Delphian Text (1930) that Bahnc, was without doubt, "the most vigorous and intensively original of the American Expressionists."

Bahnc was considered a favorite of Clarence Joseph Bulliet (1883-1952), a central figure in introducing and popularizing modern art across the Midwest. Bulliet, who authored numerous books and articles praising Bahnc's work, named her "a thorough Expressionist" in Apples and Madonnas: Emotional Expression in Modern Art (1935). He notes in his following book, The Significant Moderns and Their Pictures (1936), that Bahnc's paintings, specifically her nudes, were "powerful in (their) elemental brutality."

In 1927, Chicago art dealer Chester H. Johnson said of her work: 

"The art of Salcia Bahnc is a sincere manifestation of the spirit we know as Modernism... She is the spirit of the age, not its fashion." 

Local reviewers agreed, one going as far to say that her exhibition was "the most interesting one man show by a young artist that has ever been presented to Chicago, and I keep telling myself that New York will get her if we don't watch out."

After two successful exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1922 and 1923, where her work earned prizes in both years, Bahnc left Chicago for New York City in 1929.  There she held a studio on E. 53rd Street, and continued to produce work.

Bahnc traveled back and forth to Europe during the late 1920s and into the 1930s. In France, she married a French citizen and writer named Eugene Petit (b. 1901) and bore a son Alain Petit (b. 1934).  She again returned to the United States in November of 1937 and traveled back to France after a brief stay in America.  During her stay she continued to exhibit in Chicago, where Quest Galleries gave her a solo show.

Like other ex-patriot authors and artists living in Paris, Bahnc witnessed the rise of totalitarianism. In 1940, she found herself trapped in France (first in Paris, then in Mayenne) following the German invasion, where her Jewish heritage put her at significant risk. She and her husband were able to obtain passports and escape to Portugal. In August of 194. they returned to America aboard the S. S. Escambion.

Exactly how much of Bahnc's artwork was lost in Europe is not known --  she would not have been able to bring much, if anything, with her during her escape.  One writer noted that she was producing a large, new body of work between 1930 and 1934  for a show in Paris.

Bahnc's 1942 exhibition with Julio de Diego included works recalling the suffering in Europe.  The exhibition even included a portrait of the painter Katherine Dudley reportedly interned near Paris at the time.

In 1950, Bahnc taught portrait painting at the Evanston Art Center. During her late career, she worked extensively as an author and illustrator of children's books, including:  The House in the Tree and Other Stories of Places, People and Things (1941); Claude Of France: The Story Of Debussy For Young People (1948);  Time for Poetry(1951); Hidden Silver (1952); From Many Lands - The Children's Hour, Volume 9 (1969); and That Boy (no date).  She returned to teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during 1943-44 and 1947-53; and taught later at the Garrison Forest School in Garrison, Maryland, from 1955-57.

Salcia Bahnc Petit died in the borough of the Bronx, New York, on Tuesday, the 1st of May 1979.  She was 87 years old

Selected Museum Collections:
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Illinois State Museum, Springfield, Illinois
Princeton Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey
The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
 
Selected Exhibitions:
1917:  Thurber Galleries, Chicago, Illinois
1919-1929, 1943:  Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
circa 1920: Thurber Art Galleries, Chicago, Illinois
1921: Chicago Architectural Sketch Club, Chicago, Illinois
1922:  Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
1925:  Architectural League, Chicago, Illinois
1925:  Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1925, 1927 (solo), 1929, 1930 (solo), 1931 (solo):  Chester H. Johnson Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
1928:  Marie Sterner Gallery, New York, New York
1928:  Salon de Tuileries, Paris, France
1928: Society of Independent Artists, New York, New York
1928: Women's World Fair Exhibition, Chicago, Illinois
1929: Sur.-Independents, Paris, France
1932: Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York
1934: Gallerie La Jeune Peinture, Paris, France (solo)
1930-1935: Salon des Tuileries, Paris, France
1935, 1942: Annual Exhibition of Works by Chicago and Vicinity Artists Exhibition, Chicago, Illinois
1935, 1950: Findlay Galleries, Chicago, Illinois
1938: Quest Galleries, Chicago, Illinois (solo)
1942:  Room of Chicago Art: Exhibition of Paintings by Salcia Bahnc and  Julio de Diego, Art Institute of Chicago
1943: Albert Roullier Galleries, Chicago, Illinois (solo)
1949: Bahnc Studio Exhibition, Chicago, Illinois (solo)
1950: Louise and Thurman Nicholson Gallery, Chicago, Illinois (retrospective)
1950: Art Gallery of the College of Jewish Studies, Chicago, Illinois (solo)
1976: The Emergence of Modernism in Illinois 1914-1940, Illinois State Museum
1993-1994:  New Woman in Chicago, 1910-45: Paintings from Illinois Collections, Rockford College and Illinois State Museum