Lucius Kutchin

He worked in an expressive modernist idiom dominated by a sense of melancholy, using a dark and muted palette.

[1] The sitters for his portraits and figure studies are painted in a stylized way that conveys the sense less of an individual person than of a general type.

[1] He was commissioned to paint several murals as part of the Public Works of Art Project, such as Youth (now lost), at the South High School in Columbus.

[4] He exhibited regularly at a range of different local venues from 1932 on, gaining reputation in part as a member of "The New Group," which comprised seven of the city's most avant-garde artists.

[5] Towards the end of his life, Kutchin was beginning to gain a national reputation, with one-person shows in Detroit and Boston.

In 1988, Kutchin was the subject of a retrospective solo exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art, which holds a dozen of his paintings and monotypes.