Charley Harper Art Show at Farbach-Werner

November 10, 1:55 AMCincinnati Family ExaminerJanet Ford

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Harper's Sierra Range poster for the NPS

This week, November 11- 15, Farbach-Werner (a Hamilton County Park at Colerain Avenue and Poole Road) will host a show of Charley Harper's art.  Numbered prints will be available for purchase as well as Charley Harper collectibles in the park's Nature's Niche Gift Shop.

Charley Harper was an amazing Cincinnati artist that created a style all his own, he called "Minimal Realism."  In a letter written to the president of Frame House Gallery, which published Charley Harper's serigraphs for many years, he told his story in his own words.

Charley Harper was born in Frenchton, West Virginia, in 1922.  His family moved to an 100 acre farm where he roamed the Appalachian foothills and started illustrating his homework.  He decided he wanted to be an artist before he graduated from high school.  He spent a year at West Virginia Wesleyan College before deciding to attend a professional art school.  He attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati for a couple of years before leaving to serve in the Army in World War II.  While overwhelmed with the horror of war that he constantly encountered in Germany, Charley sought solace in his sketches.  He considered it important training as it taught him to "grasp the important elements of a scene quickly and put them down with a minimum of detail."

After the war, Charley Harper tried living in New York City, but did not enjoy it and soon moved back to Cincinnati.  He graduated from the Cincinnati Art Academy in 1947.  After graduation he married Edie and they spent four months traveling "the Great American West."  It was during this time, as he grew restless with realism, that he "concentrated on trying to simplify the great natural forms and symbolize the design underlying the surface clutter."  After the trip west, Charley needed a job and took one at a commercial art studio.  While there, he began searching for his own style.  It emerged as an "impulse to caricature and simplify at the same time."  He started experimenting with flat, line drawings with overlapping shapes.  He included black and white in every picture, played with color and size relationships.  He enjoyed working with nature subjects.

A friend introduced Charley Harper to silk-screen printing.  He was "immediately attracted to the process and found its limitations a further stimulus to the simplification of [his] designs."  With tile murals, book illustrations, 50 posters and more than 100 silk-screens,  Charley Harper was a successful and admired artist.  Enjoy the opportunity to see several examples of his work up close, this week, at Farbach- Werner.

For more info:      The Art of Charley Harper          ABC's book by Charley Harper