Midwesterners familiar with the havoc that natural
elements can wreak across the prairie can relate to the subject matter
of Philip Evergood's Aftermath
in the MacNider’s permanent collection.
Against a backdrop of a mangled picket
fence, a man reaches out to a weeping woman.
They are surrounded by four crying children
who hold onto them or stare blankly into the distance as they clutch
their dolls.
Closer examination reveals a twisted bed
frame, stovetop, dresser drawer and other scattered family belongings.
Evergood has been
called an expressionist, a social realist and a surrealist, and to some
extent, all three labels are appropriate.
His work in the 1930’s emphasized social
causes and is marked by strong elements of fantasy and the bizarre.
He cited his influences as El Greco, Bosch,
Breugel, Goya, Toulouse-Latrec, John Sloan’s Ashcan paintings, and even
prehistoric cave art.
The elongated bodies of the figures in his
paintings recall the work of El Greco.
Born in New York to a Polish Jewish artist father
and a wealthy English mother, Evergood was sent to boarding school in
England at the age of 8.
He graduated from Eton and entered
Cambridge University but left when he realized his true passion was art.
He studied at the Slade School in London and later in Paris and New
York.
During the Depression Evergood painted huge
murals under the sponsorship of the Federal Arts Project.
