Paul Cadmus

Paul Cadmus (December 17, 1904 – December 12, 1999) was an American artist widely known for his egg tempera paintings of gritty social interactions in urban settings. He also produced many highly finished drawings of single nude male figures. His paintings combine elements of eroticism and social critique in a style often called magic realism.

Early life and education Cadmus was born on December 17, 1904, in a tenement on 103rd Street near Amsterdam Avenue, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the son of artists, Maria Latasa, of Basque and Cuban ancestry, and Egbert Cadmus (1868–1939), of Dutch ancestry. His father, who studied with Robert Henri, worked as a commercial artist, and his mother illustrated children's books. His sister, Fidelma Cadmus, married Lincoln Kirstein, a philanthropist, arts patron, and co-founder of the New York City Ballet,

At age 15, Cadmus left school to attend the National Academy of Design for 6 years. In 1925, at age 20, Cadmus became a member of The Brooklyn Society of Etchers (now known as the Society of American Graphic Artists or SAGA). In their 10th Annual Exhibition held at the Brooklyn Museum he showed three etchings, "Fidelma", "Calogero Scibetta" and "Kramer". He enrolled at the Art Students League of New York in 1928 taking life-drawing lessons while working as a commercial illustrator at a New York advertising agency. He furthered his education while traveling through Europe from 1931 to 1933 with fellow artist Jared French,

Cadmus worked in commercial illustration as well, but French, also a tempera artist, convinced him to devote himself completely to fine art. In 1979, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an associate member and became a full member in 1980.

Cadmus is ranked by Artists Trade Union of Russia amongst the world's best artists of the last four centuries.

Controversies

In 1934, at the age of 29, while working for the Public Works of Art Project. This painting, which featured carousing sailors and women, included a stereotypical homosexual solicitation and erotic exaggeration of clinging pants seats and bulging crotches. It was the subject of a public outcry led by Admiral Hugh Rodman, who protested to Secretary of the Navy Claude A. Swanson, saying, "It represents a most disgraceful, sordid, disreputable, drunken brawl." Secretary Swanson stated that the painting was "right artistic" but "not true to the Navy."

In 1940, two paintings, Sailors and Floozies (1938) and Seeing the New Year In, were removed from public view because the Navy "didn't like it" and there was "too much smell about it." The paintings were being exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition and were removed, while a third, Venus and Adonis, remained. The office of Commissioner George Creel was told by the Navy that the painting, Sailors and Floozies, was "unnecessarily dirty."

Personal life From 1937 until the early 1950s, Cadmus, his lover, Jared French, and French's wife, Margaret French, formed a photographic collective called PaJaMa ("Paul, Jared, and Margaret"). During vacations in Saltaire, New York, Fire Island and later Provincetown, Massachusetts and Nantucket, the trio photographed each other on the beach and indoors, donning makeshift costumes and using found objects as props to create scenes of Magic Realism. They passed around Margaret's Leica camera, becoming subjects and makers in turn.

Many of their friends were featured in the photographs — they were among New York's young artists, dancers, and writers, and most were handsome and gay. Christopher Isherwood, and Paul Cadmus's sister Fidelma and her husband Lincoln Kirstein. Cadmus and French also posed for photographs with the noted photographer George Platt Lynes (1907–1955). These photographs were not published or exhibited while Lynes was living and show the intimacy and relationship of the two.

From 1944-1949, Cadmus was involved with artist George Tooker, forming a complicated relationship with French and his wife. When the Frenches bought a home in Hartland, Vermont, they gave Cadmus a house of his own on the property, which French later took back and gave to his Italian lover. The relationship with Anderson, a former Nantucket cabaret singer 32 years younger than Cadmus, lasted until Cadmus' death in 1999. During their 35-year relationship, in 1949.

In 1999, he died at his home in Weston, Connecticut, due to advanced age, five days before his 95th birthday.

List of works From 1931 until 1992, Cadmus produced 120 paintings, two a year on average. Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, 1942 William Benton Museum of Art, Storrs, Connecticut, 1982 Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York, 1982 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1996 D.C. Moore Gallery, New York, 1996 D.C. Moore Gallery, New York, 2024 Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 2014