Jon Schueler

Jon Schueler (September 12, 1916 – August 5, 1992) was an American painter known for his large-scale, abstract compositions which evoke nature. Recognized first as a second-generation Abstract Expressionist he lived in New York City and in Mallaig, Scotland, inspired by the dramatic skies over the Sound of Sleat. His work is included in international collections such as the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Edinburgh), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), and the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra). In 2006, at the time of solo exhibitions of his work in Edinburgh and New York, art reviewer Janet McKenzie wrote of "his remarkable commitment and development as a mature painter, abstract, yet inspired by natural phenomena." Schueler himself wrote: "When I speak of nature, I’m speaking of the sky, because in many ways the sky became nature to me. And when I think of the sky, I think of the Scottish sky over Mallaig."

Life and career Jon Schueler was born on September 12, 1916, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He wrote briefly for the New Haven Evening Register before joining the US Army Air Corps in September 1941. As a B-17 navigator stationed in England, he flew missions over France and Germany. Hospitalized and then discharged from the Air Corps in 1944, Schueler moved to Los Angeles. In 1951 he followed his friend and mentor Clyfford Still to New York City where he was introduced to Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, and Ad Reinhardt. During the 1960s he was an instructor at Yale University's Norfolk Summer School (1960, 1961), a visiting artist at both Yale University School of Art (1960-62) and the Maryland Institute (1963-67), and then Head of Graduate and Undergraduate Painting and Sculpture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1968-69). The monograph Jon Schueler: To the North with essays by Gerald Nordland and Richard Ingleby, was published by Merrell in 2002.

Style development Schueler's early painting, exhibited at his 1954 Stable Gallery solo show, evoked nature's atmospheric and rhythmic force. By the time of Schueler's 1957 Leo Castelli Gallery exhibition, however "glimmers of fantasy sea and sky, storm and fog, sun and land," set his work apart from mainstream Abstract Expressionism. Like other artists searching "for the uniqueness of their souls on the canvas," Writer B. H. Friedman recalled that his work, now painted with brushes rather than palette knives, "contained a luminosity and a glow of radiant light not found previously." By the late 1980s, his paintings were rendered with increasingly loose brushstrokes, which at times recalled his early work.

Legacy In 1999, Schueler's widow and curator of the Jon Schueler Estate, Magda Salvesen, oversaw the publication of his memoirs, The Sound of Sleat: A Painter's Life (Picador USA). That year the DVD Jon Schueler: A Life in Painting, with excerpts from the 1972 Films of Scotland production, was also released. In 2012 Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, University of the Highlands and Islands established the Jon Schueler Visual Artist in Residence Scholarship. Each year the college hosts an artist for three months selected from some 1,400 international applications. In May 2016 Sabhal Mòr Ostaig presented the Jon Schueler Centenary Symposium An Linne: The Sound of Sleat: Echoes, Reflections, and Transfigurations and accompanying exhibition. Organized by Schueler scholar Lindsay Blair, the three-day symposium also featured speakers art historians Mary Ann Caw, and Duncan Macmillan, who curated Schueler's 1981 Talbot Rice Art Centre exhibition, as well as gallerist Richard Demarco, artist Kenneth Dingwall, and fisherman-artist Will Maclean.

Collections His work is in many public collections including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Edinburgh), Gallery of Modern Art (Glasgow), Aberdeen Art Gallery, Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, City Art Centre (Edinburgh), The McManus Galleries Art Gallery and Museum (Dundee), Mallaig Heritage Centre, Paisley Museum and Art Galleries, and at the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra). In the United States his work is in the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover MA), Cleveland Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Berkeley Art Museum, Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento CA), Detroit Institute of Arts, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis MN), Harwood Museum of Art (Taos NM), National Academy Museum and School (New York), and Ringling Museum of Art (Sarasota FL). His work is also included in the art collections of the University of Edinburgh and University of Stirling in Scotland, and in Yale University (New Haven CT), Union College (Schenectady NY), University of Wyoming (Laramie WY), Neuberger Museum of Art, State University of New York (Purchase NY), and Colby College Museum of Art (Waterville ME) in the United States.