Xavier Gonzalez & Ethel Edwards Exhibition
July 5 – August 31, 2018
Fine Arts Society Gallery
215 West 57th Street, First Floor
Join us for a special exhibition in the newly formed Fine Arts Society Gallery to celebrate two League instructors, Xavier Gonzalez and Ethel Edwards. The legacy of these great artists endures with the Xavier Gonzalez and Ethel Edwards Travel Grant awarded by the Art Students League of New York annually. All proceeds from the sale of these works will directly benefit this scholarship which provides stipends to artists for travel in Gonzalez’ native Spain.
About the Artists:
Born in the coastal city of Almeria, Spain, XAVIER GONZALEZ (1898 – 1993) moved at age eight to Seville, and subsequently relocated to Mexico. After spending several summers in New York, he became a United States citizen in 1930. A year later, Gonzalez joined Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans, where he mentored ETHEL EDWARDS (1914 – 1999) a young collage artist and muralist who had secured a scholarship at the college after resisting secretarial classes. Soon after they fell in love and married. The Smithsonian currently houses hundreds of love notes exchanged between the artists, many in pictograms, conveying their enduring affection. Their mutual admiration is realized through their prolific artistic practice and frequent production of tributes to one another.
During the World War II years Edwards and Gonzales moved to New York City where they both taught at the Art Students League. After the war, they split their time between New York City and Cape Cod and founded a summer painting school there and continued teaching at the League. Together they traveled and often referenced the sites they visited in the artwork they produced. In 1947 Gonzalez received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1956 was commissioned by Life to research and paint various monuments in Egypt; the oil paintings that resulted are now part of the collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Gallery Summer Hours
Monday – Friday, 9:00 am – 8:30 pm
Saturday – Sunday, 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
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