Clay Edgar Spohn

Clay Edgar Spohn (November 24, 1898 – December 19, 1977) was an American painter, muralist, printmaker, sculptor, designer, and educator. He taught at the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute), and School of Visual Arts in New York City. Spohn's art has been described as "whimsical, abstract and satirical". He was a member of the collective American Abstract Artists.

Early life and education Clay Edgar Spohn was born on November 24, 1898, in San Francisco, California. He was raised in Berkeley, California, and graduated from Berkeley High School.

He attended the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts) from 1911 to 1912; the University of California, Berkeley from 1919 to 1921, under Perham Nahl; the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute); the Art Students League of New York from 1922 to 1925, under Kenneth Hayes Miller, Boardman Robinson, George Luks and Guy DuBois; and the Académie Moderne in Paris from 1926 to 1927, under Fernand Léger and Othon Friesz.

At the Art Students League of New York, Spohn befriended sculptor Alexander Calder, who had an art studio near his classes while he was in Paris.

In early 1942, Spohn created a body of work he called "Guerro-Graphs" consisting of gouache paintings of abstracted war machines.

From 1945 to 1950, Spohn taught at the California School of Fine Arts (now San Francisco Art Institute), the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Oakland Museum of California; the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

1942, Fantastic War Machines and Guerragraphs, solo exhibition, San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, California 1995, Pacific Dreams: Currents of Surrealism and Fantasy in California Art, 1934–1957, group exhibition, Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, California; including artists Spohn, Helen Lundeberg, Lorser Feitelson, Adaline Kent, Wolfgang Paalen, Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Ruth Bernhard, John Gutmann, Edward Weston, Knud Merrild