ROLPH SCARLETT, was born in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, and some years later when he was fourteen he began to design jewelry professionally, a craft which he continued off and on for the rest of his life.

His major effort was as a painter of abstract geometric works and of abstract expressionistic paintings. The major collector of his work is the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York which owned over a hundred and twenty Scarletts, both oils and works on paper.

His long life as an artist began in his teens as a jewelry designer and fabricator, and his desire to learn more about art took him to New York in 1908 when American artists were just beginning to experience strong influences from major modern European artists of the day such as Cezanne and Picasso.

And after a short return to Canada Scarlett moved permanently to the United States in 1918 to live and work as an artist. In 1923 he traveled to Germany, met the artist Paul Klee, and devoted himself to the principles of non-objective and abstract art. In 1928 he moved to Hollywood, California where he designed sets for motion picture studios and the Pasadena Playhouse, an extremely well-known and well-respected live theatre. His set designs from this period have survived and from time to time appear on the market. Their stark sincerity and simpleness mark them as still very contemporary and modern. In the mid-1930s he met the director of the Museum of Non-objective Art in New York (later the Guggenheim), Hilla Rebay, who figures prominently in his career for many years. Scarlett’s ongoing relationship with the Non-Objective Museum and Rebay has many facets. His work was collected by both Hilla Rebay and Solomon Guggenheim, as well as the museum itself. He taught and gave lectures at the museum and in the 1940s became friends with and worked at the Museum with the abstract expressionist painter, Jackson Pollack. Earlier, during the 1930s, Scarlett’s work was very pure in the geometric abstract style for the most part. From the mid-1930s through the early 1950s, he made monoprints of a mixed media nature which Janet Flint, curator of American Prints at the Smithsonian said, "were among the earliest Abstract relief prints created in the United States." And in the late 1930s Scarlett began to paint in the Abstract Expressionist style and is historically important as both an American pioneer in purely abstract and in the abstract expressionist styles.

Meanwhile in the 1930s he was regularly exhibiting his work in Los Angeles, at the Art Institute in Chicago, San Francisco Art Museum and, of course, in New York City: the Modern Age Gallery in N.Y., the Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum and at the Museum of Modern Art. In the Fifties he had a one-man show at the Jacques Seligman Gallery. His work is spoken of and referred to in almost every art book dealing with purely abstract American art. His work is in numerous collections, both public and private.

He moved to Woodstock, New York in the 1950s where he remained until his death, working and occasionally teaching. Since his death in 1984, the Washburn Gallery in New York, among many others, has given him numerous shows; there have been approximately 14 one-man shows of his work, mostly in New York City. (Copyright 2003 by Art Exchange)

Mixed media on Board

Image Size: 7" X 11" Signed: Lower Right - Framed

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