Daniel Brustlein
[note 1][note 2] Although they have not received the same public acclaim as his humorous drawings, his paintings drew strong praise from influential critics such as Hilton Kramer, who said Brustlein's work had great refinement showing "beautiful control over the precise emotion he wants it to convey" and "complete command of color and form handled with a remarkable delicacy and discretion.
[1][2] Although attached to Germany and known as Mülhausen during Brustlein's childhood, the town retained historic ties to France and, despite their unavoidable German citizenship, many of its citizens—Brustlein included—considered themselves to be French.
[19][20][note 5] Through his friendship with Coquillot, Brustlein found work drawing illustrations and cartoons and within a few years he had become a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine.
Consisting of nearly 100 posters made by cartoonists and comic strip artists, the show raised money for both United China Relief and U.S. War Bonds.
[25][note 6] In February of the same year he won a prize at a benefit exhibition of cartoons sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Cartoonists and held at the Art Students League.
At the close of the war they moved to Paris and, while living there most of the year, retained American citizenship and usually spent some months in the United States.
After the close of World War II he continued to place drawings and cartoons in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, Look, and Esquire, but he also began to make paintings for group and solo exhibitions in galleries located in New York, Paris, and other cities.
In 1952 a French critic included him among the best young painters of the day when reporting his nomination for the Prix de la Critique (Galerie Saint Placide, Paris).
Apart from Brustlein, the artists, who were not generally known for their portraiture, included Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Milton Resnick, and Larry Rivers.
[12][32] A year later his paintings appeared in the annual exhibition at the L'École de Paris for the first time, and in 1959 he was given a second one-person show at the Stable Gallery.
[11] Four years later his brother-in-law, Jack Tworkov, wrote a feature article on him for the November issue of ARTnews,[12] and that month, his work appeared in a solo exhibition at the Saidenberg Gallery.
Appearing at the New School Art Center, the show drew praise from Stuart Preston of the New York Times for its "delectable items" that "make for extraordinary documentary value.
[12][36] Of a painting he saw in 1978, the Times critic Hilton Kramer wrote that Brustlein showed "complete command of color and form handled with a remarkable delicacy and discretion.
It is in the sensitive handling of the medium—in cool greens and blues of "Chinatown," in the copper-haired figure of "Rastro," in the way the couch encloses the three figures in "Ladybug"—that we feel his special felicity as a painter.Three years later, discussing another solo show at Sachs, a critic praised his "taste for muted colors that may owe something to Paris" and said his oil paint has the pleasing quality of slightly decaying fresco.
[41] The book describes the transition from winter to spring from the point of view of the chickadees, bluebirds, and swallows who then start building nests and sing with a new vigor.
Introducing an evil character, "Monsieur Down," it explains how medieval builders used the arch to overcome the destructive force he employed, that of gravity, so that they might construct the great Gothic cathedrals of France.
The text says "Monsieur Down" was so enraged at being defeated that he turned to stone and is now a great gargoyle, seated high upon Notre Dame de Paris.
The book, which describes the title character's life in a royal palace, drew praise from the New York Times for the quality of its illustrations.
At the time of his birth the town was called Mülhausen as it was then part the German Empire, having been ceded by France following her defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
[13][49][50][51] One of the oldest families in the community, the Brustleins became prominent in the late fifteenth century during a transition from an aristocratic council to a democratic form of government.
[52]: 8, 89 Thereafter members of the family served frequently as the town's mayor and in 1512 one Martin Brustlein commanded a company of Mulhousiens in successful battles to defend Pope Jules II from attacks by armies of King Louis XII of France.
[63] That year de Kooning insisted that Brustlein join the members-only club that he and other artists of the New York School had founded to discuss topics related to the art movement that would become known as abstract expressionism.
