Philip Evergood

The paintings of American artist Philip Evergood (1901-1973), especially those executed during the 1930s, reveal his concern for social causes; although realistic, they are also marked by elements of fantasy.

Philip Evergood, whose real name was Philip Blashki, was born in New York City on October 26, 1901. He was the son of an unsuccessful Polish painter who had come to America from Australia. After attending boarding schools in England, Blashki graduated from Eton in 1919. He changed his name to Evergood because British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had written that Anglo-Saxons were full of prejudice. When Evergood discovered that he wanted to be an artist, he left Cambridge University to study drawing under Henry Tonks, head of the Slade School of Fine Art, London.

In 1923 Evergood returned to America, where he studied with George Luks at the Art Students League in New York City, and then went to Paris, where he attended the Académie Julian. He went back to New York in 1926. In 1927 he held his first one-man show in New York and exhibited frequently thereafter. In 1929 Evergood returned to France. In 1931, traveling through Spain, he was impressed by the work of El Greco. That year he also married the dancer Julia Cross.

In America during the 1930s Evergood painted huge murals under the auspices of the Federal Arts Project, such as the Story of Richmond Hill (1936-1937). In 1936 he moved to Woodstock, NY, and that year he took part in the "219" strike protesting layoffs from the Federal Arts Project. In 1952 he moved to Southbury, CT. He died in Bridgewater, CT on March 11, 1973.

Evergood has been classified as an expressionist, a social realist, and a surrealist. To some degree, all the labels are appropriate. His work, turning on social causes especially during the 1930s, is marked throughout by strong elements of fantasy and the bizarre. He acknowledged the influence of painters Mathias Grünewald, Pieter Bruegel, Hieronymus Bosch, and El Greco and the graphic work of Francisco Goya, Honoré Daumier, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. But his art is also closely tied to reality and often deals with actual events, as in the Burial of the Queen of Sheba (1933), which shows Evergood and his wife illegally burying their cat in a backyard. In My Forebears Were Pioneers (1940), Evergood pictures a staunch old woman sitting placidly in her rocking chair before huge, uprooted trees and her picturesque 19th century house. The scene was based on a woman he had encountered while driving in the countryside. In Enigma of the Collective American Soul (1959), Evergood combines the grotesque with social commentary by juxtaposing portraits of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower and Churchill with an insipid beauty contest winner, while in a corner of the painting two small boys steal a smoke.

Further Reading

John I. H. Baur, Philip Evergood (1960), is the only monograph on Evergood. It contains much biographical information and 91 illustrations.

Additional Sources

The Dictionary of Art Grove's Dictionaires Inc., 1996.

Evergood, Philip, Philip Evergood, New York: H. N. Abrams, 1975.

Taylor, Kendall, Philip Evergood: Never Separate From the Heart, Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1987. □

Evergood, Philip (1901–1973). American painter, born in New York, the son of Myer Blashki, a landscape painter of Australian-Polish descent (Blashki changed his surname in 1914, anglicizing it to a version of his mother's maiden name, Immergut). Philip's mother came from a cultured British family and in 1909 he was sent to England to receive the best possible education. After schooling at Eton, he went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he studied English literature, but he left without taking a degree to go to the Slade School, 1921–3. Subsequently he studied at the Art Students League in New York, 1923–4, and the Académie Julian in Paris, 1924–6. He returned to Paris in 1929–31 and during this time briefly studied engraving under Hayter. His early works were mainly of biblical and imaginative subjects, but after settling in New York in 1931 he became a leading figure among the Social Realists who used their art as an instrument of protest and propaganda during the Depression years. He described how ‘one of the things I saw that probably drove me faster into this way of thinking’ was coming across a group of ‘outcasts of New York’ huddled around a fire on a cold winter's night: ‘I went over to the fire and talked to them … their tragedy hit me between the eyes because I had never been as close to anything like that before. Then I got a brain wave. It seemed to me that I should be involved in my work with this kind of thing. So I … got some drawing materials and came back and sat with them and drew all night.’ He became involved in several organizations concerned with the civil rights of artists, and under the banner of the Federal Art Project he produced militant paintings of social criticism, his best-known work in this vein being American Tragedy (Whitney Museum, New York, 1937), which commemorates a police attack on striking steel workers in Chicago.

After the 1930s Evergood was less concerned with topical or political themes and returned to allegorical and religious paintings, but these too sometimes had sociological overtones, as in The New Lazarus (Whitney Museum, 1954), with its figures of starving children. He experimented technically (sometimes, for example, mixing marble dust with his paint to obtain a textured surface) and his work was varied stylistically; at times his inclination for the bizarre and the grotesque brought his work close to Surrealism, as is seen particularly in his most famous work, Lily and the Sparrows (Whitney Museum, 1939). Evergood taught at various universities and won numerous awards.

Evergood, Philip (b New York, 26 Oct. 1901; d Bridgewater, Conn., 11 Mar. 1973). American painter. He was educated in England, at Eton and Cambridge (his mother came from a cultured British family), and much of his early life was spent travelling and studying in Europe. His early works were mainly of biblical and imaginative subjects, but after settling in New York in 1931 he became a leading figure among the Social Realists who used their art as an instrument of social protest and propaganda during the Depression years. He was active in several organizations concerned with the civil rights of artists, and under the banner of the Federal Art Project he produced militant paintings of social criticism, his best-known work in this genre being American Tragedy (1937, Whitney Mus., New York), which commemorates a police attack on striking steel workers in Chicago. Even his allegorical religious painting The New Lazarus (1954, Whitney Mus.) has sociological overtones, with its figures of starving children. He experimented technically (sometimes, for example, mixing marble dust with his paint to obtain a textured surface) and his work was varied stylistically; at times his inclination for the bizarre and the grotesque brought his work close to Surrealism, as is seen particularly in his most famous painting, Lily and the Sparrows (1939, Whitney Mus.). Evergood taught at various universities and won numerous awards.

Evergood, Philip (1901–73). American painter. He was educated in England, at Eton and Cambridge (his mother came from a cultured British family), and much of his early life was spent travelling and studying in Europe. His early works were mainly of biblical and imaginative subjects, but after settling in New York in 1931 he became a leading figure among the Social Realists who used their art as an instrument of social protest and propaganda during the Depression years. He was active in several organizations concerned with the civil rights of artists, and under the banner of the Federal Art Project he produced militant paintings of social criticism, his best-known work in this genre being American Tragedy (1937, Whitney Mus., New York), which commemorates a police attack on striking steelworkers in Chicago. Even his allegorical religious painting The New Lazarus (1954, Whitney Mus.) has sociological overtones, with its figures of starving children. His style varied, but his inclination for the bizarre and grotesque sometimes brings his work close to Surrealism, as is seen in what is perhaps his most famous painting, Lily and the Sparrows (1939, Whitney Mus.).

Philip Evergood 1901–73, American painter and etcher, b. New York City. His original name was Philip Blashki. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge and studied art in New York City and Paris. Evergood was famed for his murals, including The Story of Richmond Hill (1936–37; Public Library branch, Queens, N.Y.) and Cotton from Field to Mill (1938; U.S. Post Office, Jackson, Ga.). His work combines realism with fantasy, as in Lily and the Sparrows (1939; Whitney Mus., New York City). In the 1950s Evergood concentrated on symbolism, both biblical and mythological. A characteristic work is The New Lazarus (1954; Whitney Mus.).

Bibliography: See his graphic work, selected by L. R. Lippard (1966); study by J. Baur (1960).