John (Jan) Zwara 1880-1951
Shepard's Farm (1941)
Gouache on Paper
15 x 18 inches
Signed Lower Left
This work was featured in our 2nd Annual Curated Sale of Historic Indiana Art, April 8th, 2018 at the Indianapolis Art Center. This painting was featured in our weekly email on 9/15/17 along with the following gallery comments: In my book, Jan Zwara is one of the most compelling figures in Indiana art. He was an émigré from Hungary, doing some set/scenery painting in Paris along the way. Once in the States, he ultimately wound up in Indianapolis and had patrons in the Lieber and Vonnegut families, among others. He was an untreated schizophrenic (as there wasn’t much in the way of treatment back then). He spent six months at Central State Hospital. Zwara painted to live and lived to paint – vastly prolific and a lot of his output was gouache. Today’s painting, Shepard’s Farm (kinda our title, see below) is one of his many Brown County works. How Zwara even traveled to Brown County is a mystery to me – apparently he took the train to Bloomington and then to Helmsburg where he got a ride. This is a sight he painted more than once and some years ago I owned an oil of the same farmstead with some annotation. And that note by Zwara indicated the farmstead was ‘Shepard’s Farm’. I love that fence row! A very nice Zwara example and of iconic Brown County, no less.
SOLD
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