Born: 1918 Dresden, Germany
Died: 1992 USA
Year of Migration to the UK: 1933
Other name/s: Irene Aronson, Irene Anderson, Irene Aronsohn
Biography
Painter, printmaker, book illustrator and teacher, Irene Hilde Aronson was born into a Jewish family in Dresden, Germany in 1918. In 1935, she emigrated from Germany to England (due to rising Nazism and anti-Semitic legislation), where she studied variously at Eastbourne School of Art (1935–37) and, afterwards, simultaneously, at the Ruskin School of Drawing, University of Oxford and the Slade School of Fine Art (1937-1940, when the Slade relocated out of London during the war), where she undertook her Masters in Fine Art and was awarded a Gold Medal for one of her works in 1939. Her Slade tutors included Vladimir Polunin, renowned former stage designer for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and Professor Randolph Schwabe).
In 1941 her family moved to the USA (travelling via Ecuador), where Aronson first worked as an assistant teacher at the Walden School, New York. Throughout her childhood in Dresden, she had always been fascinated by opera which led to her developing a career in stage design. She flourished professionally across the Atlantic, where she became a celebrated stage designer (creating costumes for the Barnum and Bailey Circus and the Broadway performance of Front Page, among other projects), printmaker and book illustrator. In 1944 she exhibited a gouache and ink costume design in MoMA’s fifteenth anniversary exhibition, Art in Progress. She also taught stage design and costume at the City College of New York. Aronson became a key member of the printmaking group Atelier 17, which she joined in the late 1940s (Holly Beye, 2006, p. 21). The studio, originally formed in Paris in the 1930s as an experimental workshop for graphic arts, under renowned printmaker, Stanley William Hayter, relocated to New York during the years around the Second World War, and allowed her to combine her interest in the visual arts with her passion for stage performance and to develop her practice in intaglio printing. Many of her intaglio prints possessed a theatrical or musical theme, such as her major and most famous portfolios Danse Macabre (1951) and The Circus (1952). The former was possibly inspired by terrible scenes of violence and death which she had witnessed as a Jew in Germany (Mary Jane Moore, Long Island Daily Press, 17 April 1953), while the latter gained her critical attention and earned her a solo exhibition at the Weyhe Gallery, New York in the same year. Many reviewers praised the simplicity of her work and noted the influence of Paul Klee on her etching style, with noted critic, Dore Ashton, celebrating Aronson's work as 'refreshing, in these times of extensive technological research in graphic art' (Ashton 1952, p. 22).
In 1960 she took a Bachelor of Arts at Columbia University, New York, followed by a Master of Arts degree two years later. Aronson remained active in printmaking, mastering woodcut and colour lithography and writing 'how-to' articles about printmaking techniques and exhibiting her works in galleries, while living in Rego Park and Forest Hills in Queens, New York. During her American years she also took classes variously at the prestigious Art Students League of New York and Parsons School of Design, under tutors including German émigré George Grosz. Briefly returning to England, she held a solo exhibition in the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne in 1961. She married Arthur Anderson but continued to sign her works under her maiden name as well. Irene Aronson died in 1992 in the USA. Examples of her work are in the Victoria & Albert Museum, British Museum (including lithographs of Battersea Bridge and the Thames), as well as public collections in the USA, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington DC.
Related books
- Christina Weyl, 'Irene Aronson', in The Women of Atelier 17: The Biographical Supplement (New York: Christina Weyl, 2019), pp. 232-233
- Jutta Vinzent, 'List of Refugee Artists (Painters, Sculptors, and Graphic Artists) From Nazi Germany in Britain (1933-1945)', in Identity and Image: Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933-1945) (Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2006) pp. 249-298
- Holly Beye, 120 Charles Street, the Village: Journals & Writings, 1949-1950 (Huron, Ohio: Bottom Dog Press, 2006), p. 21
- Werner Röder and Herbert A. Strauss eds., Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933–1945 (New York: K. G. Saur, 1999), pp. 34-35
- Jules Heller and Nancy G. Heller eds., North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: a Biographical Dictionary (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995), p. 537
- Kathy Chʾiu, Chinese Fables (New York: Peter Pauper Press, 1967) (illustrated by Irene Aronson)
- Irene Aronson, 'The Technique of the Color Lithograph', American Artist, Vol. 27, No. 8, October 1963, p. 30
- Irene Aronson, 'The Print Maker: an Introduction to the Technique of Etching', Design Vol. 56, No. 4, 1955, pp. 149-51
- Mary Jane Moore, 'She Puts Circus Life on Canvas', Long Island Daily Press, 17 April 1953
- Dore Ashton, 'Irene Aronson', Art Digest, Vol. 26, September 1952, pp. 17, 22
- Irene Aronson, Drawings, Designs, Illustrations, Sketches Related to the Theatre (New York: New York Public Library, 1948)
Public collections
- British Museum
- Victoria & Albert Museum
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- National Museum of Art, Washington D.C.
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
Related organisations
- Art Students League, New York (student)
- Atelier 17 (member)
- Columbia University (student)
- Eastbourne School of Art (student)
- Parsons School of Design (student)
- Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (student)
- Slade School of Fine Art (student)
- Walden School, New York (teacher)
Related web links
Selected exhibitions
- Solo exhibition, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (1961)
- Exposición de La Grabadora Norteameicano Irene Aronson, Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno, Mexico City (1959)
- Exhibition of Two Portfolios by Irene Aronson, Weyhe Gallery, New York (1952)
- Art in Progress: 15th Anniversary Exhibitions: Dance and Theatre Design, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1944)
