Dated Web objects 1920-1959

Philip Evergood

Date: 1951

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.34

Text Entries: Philip Evergood's work often belies his academic training. Though born in New York City, Evergood spent his formative years in England as a student at Eton, Cambridge University and later the Slade Art School in London. Additional European sojourns took him to France where he enrolled at the Académie Julian, to Italy where he attended the British Academy in Rome and Spain where he studied the work of artists such as El Greco, Goya, and Velásquez. After returning to the United States in 1931, Evergood settled, once again, in New York City and made the urban environment and its inhabitants the subject of much of his work. Evergood often wandered through New York's Union Square neighborhood, observing and recording the individuals and events around him. Back in his studio, he translated his sketches and photographs into their finished form. Concerned with social issues and determined to use his art as a vehicle through which to explore them, Evergood used jarring color, distorted line, and compressed compositions to create confrontational and ambiguous images. Passing Show is one such painting. A scene outside of a five and dime store plays out as human drama and entices the viewer to complete the narrative. As Evergood once explained in 1964, "For thirty years I have been using human situations graphically…to try and entertain, but at the same time to explore cavities of decay and to try and build up little anthill islands of hope."