PHILIP PERKINS (1907-1970)
Space Travel, 1945
Oil on canvas
10 x 8 ¼ inches
Dated on canvas verso: 1945
Titled on stretcher bar: Space Travel
Unsigned
Philip Perkins was born in 1907 in Waverly, Tennessee. He studied at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee from 1925 to 1926 and at the Chicago Art Institute from 1926 to 1931. He became an abstract painter and is best known for his geometric, cubist influenced work of the forties.
In 1932 he moved to Paris, France and studied with Jean Marchaud and Louis Marcoussis until 1934. He continued his studies with Fernand Leger from 1934 to 1937. In 1934 he exhibited at the Salon dAutomne and the Salon de Tuilleries in Paris.
Perkins left Paris in 1940 and moved to New York City where he shared a studio with Yves Tanguy. In 1947 he participated in the International Surrealist Exhibition, Galerie Maeght, Paris, France. Perkins returned to Nashville in 1948 to teach at the University of Tennessee at Nashville.
New York art critic Emily Genauer selected his painting Debris of Summer to be included in her book Best of Art, a survey contemporary paintings that was published in 1948. Also included was work by Yves Tanguy, Marc Chagall, Henry Varnum Poor, Stuart Davis, Walt Kuhn, and Max Weber.
In 1955 he received a two-year fellowship from the School of International Painting in Segovia, Spain. For the next four years Perkins lived, painted and exhibited in Spain and on the Isle of Ibiza.
Perkins returned to Paris to live and paint in 1959. Two years later, in 1961, Perkins again returned to Nashville to live. He died there of cancer in 1970 at the age of 63.
His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio and the Georgia Museum of Art, The University Of Georgia, Athens, Georgia among others.
