‘Kennebec Race, Maine’ by Jason Schoener, Large Abstract, Mills College, Oakland, Whitney Museum, New York Art Students League

Signed lower right, ‘Schoener’ for Jason Schoener (American, 1919-1997) and painted circa 1970. Titled ‘Kennebec Race’ (labels, verso).
Previously with Midtown Galleries, New York (label, verso)
Displayed in a substantial, polished maple frame.
Framed size: 45.5 x 2.5 x 63.5 inches.

A large and luminous, abstracted landscape showing a panoramic view of Maine’s Kennebec River and the surrounding hills on a sunny day.

The nephew of the artist William Zorach and cousin of artist Dahlov Zorach Ipcar, Jason Schoener first studied with his uncle and cousin and, subsequently, at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Columbia University and the Art Students League in New York. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he taught sculpture, ceramics and crafts at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. In 1953, Schoener joined the faculty of the California College of Arts and Crafts where he served as teacher, administrator and, eventually, dean for more than forty years. Additional teaching assignments included at Mills College in Oakland, California, and at the Athens Technological Institute in Greece. In 1994, the artist donated twenty-one of his war-time paintings to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Jason Schoener’s early paintings were narrative and figurative, featuring the working men and women he encountered in his daily life. By mid-career, he was primarily painting abstract landscapes in brilliant, and often surprising, color. For over forty years, he exhibited nationwide with success including regularly, from 1960-1983, at New York’s Midtown Gallery. The artist’s work is held in private and public collections nationwide including in the permanent collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Oakland Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, among others. Schoener’s paintings may also be found in the collection of the U.S. Department of State for exhibition in American Embassies world-wide. The Schoener papers are housed in the collection of the Archives of American Art.