George Tooker was an American painter born in Brooklyn in 1920.
“Although Tooker had begun to experiment with egg tempera through Marsh, it was Cadmus and French, in particular, who encouraged him to adopt it as his primary medium.”
George Tooker grew up in Bellport, Long Island, and began taking painting lessons at age seven with Malcolm Fraser, a professional artist who had studied in Paris, and he later graduated from Harvard University in 1942 with a degree in English literature.
George Tooker enlisted in the Marine Corps after graduating but was soon discharged for health reasons, and he then enrolled at the Art Students League in New York, where he studied with Reginald Marsh in 1943 and 1944, and also took courses with Kenneth Hayes Miller and Harry Sternberg.
George Tooker met Paul Cadmus while he was a monitor in one of Marsh’s classes, and Cadmus introduced him to Jared and Margaret French, artists who became lifelong friends, and it was Cadmus and French who encouraged him to adopt egg tempera as his primary medium.
George Tooker moved to an apartment on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village in 1945, and a year later he was included in Dorothy Miller’s exhibition Fourteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art, which had a major impact on his developing career.
In 1950, George Tooker participated in the exhibition Symbolic Realism, organized by Lincoln Kirstein, which brought him increased recognition, and that same year the Whitney Museum of American Art acquired Subway, his first painting to enter a museum collection.
- Born in Brooklyn in August 1920.
- Graduated from Harvard University in 1942.
- Studied at the Art Students League with Reginald Marsh.
- He was included in Fourteen Americans at MoMA in 1946.
- His painting Subway was acquired by the Whitney in 1950.
George Tooker lived in a brownstone on State Street in Brooklyn Heights after a fire damaged his loft in 1953, and a rooming house across the street inspired a number of his paintings in the following years, including his windows series, and in 1954 he recieved a commission to design sets for Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera The Saint of Bleecker Street.
Art Category Fact: Magic Realism is an art movement that emerged in the early 20th century, characterized by a realistic depiction of the world with subtle or overt fantastic elements, blurring the line between reality and imagination, with key figures including George Tooker, Paul Cadmus, and Jared French, who were part of the Magic Realist group that explored social and psychological themes in their work.
“Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” — Bertolt Brecht
