Ralston Crawford

Ralston Crawford (1906–1978) was a Canadian-born American painter, lithographer, photographer, and teacher. He is best known for his abstract representations of urban life and industry. He taught at the Cincinnati Art Academy (now Art Academy of Cincinnati) for many years.

Early life He was born on September 5, 1906, in St. Catharines, Ontario, and spent his childhood in Buffalo, New York.

He studied art beginning in 1927 in California at the Otis Art Institute. After working at the Walt Disney Studio in Hollywood, California,

Work In 1934, he had his first one-man show at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Crawford is best known for his abstract paintings of urban life and industry. His early work placed him with Precisionist artists like Niles Spencer and Charles Sheeler. He stayed there for about seven months and then transferred to Washington, DC where he served as the chief of visual presentation in the United States Army Air Force, weather division.

Collections The Addison Gallery of American Art (Andover, Massachusetts), the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences (Charleston, West Virginia), the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art (University of Oklahoma); the Georgia Museum of Art (University of Georgia); Harvard University Art Museums, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington D.C.), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the James A. Michener Art Museum (Doylestown, Pennsylvania), the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City, Missouri), the Kresge Art Museum (Michigan State University), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Mead Art Museum (Amherst College), the Museum of Modern Art (New York City), the Saint Louis Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), the Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, Florida), The Phillips Collection (Washington D.C), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), the Tweed Museum of Art (University of Minnesota, Duluth), the Walker Art Center (Minnesota), the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Salt Lake City), the Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati, Ohio), the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute (Utica, New York), and the Whitney Museum of American Art Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art(Auburn University, Alabama),(New York City) are among the public collections holding work by Ralston Crawford.