RAYMOND BROSSARD US ARMY MURALIST NEW YORK WPA ARTIST VINTAGE SCI FI PAINTING

Description: RAYMOND BROSSARD ORIGINAL PAINTING ON BOARD SIGNED BOTTOM RIGHT AND DATED 1952 CONDITION: SCRATCH IN CENTER OF BOARD RETOUCHED HARD TO SPOT PLEASE SEE PICTURES OTHER TOUCHUPS AND AGE RELATED WEAR. FRAME HAS SCRATCHES AND WEAR THROUGHOUT. BOARD 10 BY 12 INCHES FRAME 16 BY 17 3/4 INCHES Raymond Edgar Brossard was born in Irvington, New Jersey, on January 15, 1915, the only son of Grace Christian and Edgar Bross. He had two sisters, Harriet and Marjorie (both deceased). At fourteen, he left home in search of a more adventurous life, ending up a year later in Los Angeles, where he remained for the next five years.As a young boy, Brossard had been interested in painting and writing. Once settled in Los Angeles, in between odd jobs and factory work, he developed his drawing skills by studying the work of Leonardo da Vinci in the public library. Concurrently, he worked on a book entitled The Agony in the Garden, an autobiography of his childhood and adolescence.When he was eighteen, encouraged by the Japanese/German art critic and writer, Sadakichi Hartmann, Brossard had his first one-man show of drawings and caricatures at the Hollywood Gallery. Reviews by leading Los Angeles critics were favorable and another exhibition followed a year later. Although by then he had completed his book, which received praise from such persons as Havelock Ellis and Aaron Rosanoff, so he decided to concentrate on art rather than writing.Brossard returned to New York in 1936 and engaged in extensive freelance painting and drawing from Maine to Florida. As a part of a WPA project, he taught in the Art Department of the Y.M.H.A Educational Center (92nd Street Y) in Manhattan, along with his friend, Zero (Sammy) Mostell. During this period, 1939-41, he made several trips to Mexico.Brossard was drafted into the Army in 1941, completing his basic training at the Engineer Camp, Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Along with Willard Cummings, he was chosen to start the ERTC Art Project, which entailed the recording, via murals, of the training history at Fort Belvoir. Six other painters eventually joined them and the murals were hung in the Pentagon.When the mural project ended in 1943, Brossard went to Engineer Officers' Candidate School and, upon graduating, became a camouflage officer for the Air Service Command at San Bernardino, California. After his transfer to Air Intelligence School, he was sent by the Air Corps to the China/Burma/India theater. While with the Tenth Air Force in Northern Burma, he contributed watercolors depicting the Force's history.In 1945, Lt. Brossard was made a liaison officer with the British on the tropical island of Akyab in Southern Burma. Toward the end of the war, he visited Northwest Punjab and was the first U.S. citizen to cross the Rohtang Pass into Tibet. Travel and Camera Magazine published his illustrated article, "Tibetan Frontier," describing the trip.In 1946, Brossard married Lysia Landsey (of Scotland and South Africa), whom he had met in Calcutta during World War II, when she was a Captain in the British FANNY's. They went to San Miguel de Allende in the state of Guanajuato in Mexico, where their daughter, Erica, was born.He taught drawing and painting at the Instituto de Bellas Artes there. The tranquility and beauty of this old colonial town kept him in San Miguel for three years -- teaching, doing murals and exhibiting in nearby Mexico City. He moved to the capital in 1950 and quickly became one of the city's leading young artists. His son, Christopher, was born there.Brossard left Mexico for New York City in 1954, following his divorce from Lysia. He again immersed himself in the art world and was soon having exhibits in Manhattan, as well as in various galleries in New Jersey and Connecticut. In 1957, he married Cora Smith of New York.During his eighteen years in New York, his work included commissions in a variety of settings, night clubs, apartment buildings, political campaign headquarters, TV, fund raising exhibits and churches. His mosaic mural with the theme of petroleum and electrical power was installed in the Luz Electrica Building in Caracas, Venezuela. He also executed a large, outdoor mural for the Institute for International Living in Putney, Vermont.An artist of many facets, Brossard also tried his hand at sculpture and ceramics, achieving notable success in these areas as well. His black driftwood figures were exhibited in the windows of Bonwit Teller department store.Raymond Brossard was entirely self-taught and painted primarily in egg tempera and pyroxilin (auto lacquer). He was an accomplished draftsman. Sculpture media included metals, driftwood, clay, slate -- in fact, whatever caught the fancy of his fertile imagination.While much of his painting was from life, his work often reflected an "inner landscape," half real/half fantasy, dynamic yet mysterious. Always innovative, he was not afraid to deviate from conventional techniques and materials in order to achieve a desired effect. He is represented in collections throughout the world, including the U.S.A., Britain, Europe, Latin America and Asia. One of his paintings is part of a permanent collection at San Francisco's Legion of Honor Museum (1957 purchase).While in New York, Brossard was Vice President of the National Society of Mural Painters for several years and was a regular contributor to the city's Design Center. He was a member of the Adventurers Club and the Kit Kat Club.Brossard's main hobby was writing. At eighteen, when he completed the Agony in the Garden, Havelock Ellis described it as "an extraordinary document of a young boy's early years and of real sociological significance." Publication, however, was withheld, as it was considered too "avant garde", and editors, despite their praise, felt the average reader was not ready for such a document. Throughout his life he wrote short stories, poems and articles of various kinds, many of which were published. At the time of his death, he was doing research on the biography of the James Otis family, who had been prominent in the early history of the U.S.A.In 1972, Brossard moved to Ocean Grove, New Jersey, feeling that the peaceful atmosphere of the uniquely quaint town might help him recover from the prolonged illness which ultimately took his life. He died on April 27, 1976, at the Veteran's Hospital in New York City. In keeping with his request, his ashes were scattered in the Atlantic off the New Jersey shore.Written and submitted by Erica Brossard, daughter of the artist.

Price: 1200 USD

Location: Northridge, California

End Time: 2024-10-06T02:38:09.000Z

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