Philip Perkins

Private Collection, Florida
Childs Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts (acquired by 2013)
Acquired from the above

Canvas and board are stable. Surface is very slightly dirty. Under UV light: pindot retouches toward upper right and upper left corners, and one small repair at extreme lower right corner, otherwise fine. Numbered PP110 (on the reverse of the board). The work is in good condition.
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Philip Perkins was born in 1907 in Waverly, Tennessee. He studied at Vanderbilt University in Nashville 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 1940s.

In 1932 he moved to Paris and studied with Jean Marchaud and Louis Marcoussis until 1934. He continued his studies with Fernand Léger from 1934 to 1937. In 1934 he exhibited at the Salon d'automne and the Salon de Tuilleries in Paris. Perkins left Paris in 1940 and moved to New York City where he shared a studio with Tves Tanguy. In 1947, Tanguy dedicated a gouache to him. That same year he participated in the International Surrealist Exhibition at Galerie Maeght in Paris. Perkins returned to Nashville in 1948 to teach at the University of Tennessee.

New York art critic Emily Genauer selected his painting, Debris of Summer, to be included in her book Best of Art, a survey of contemporary paintings published in 1948. Also included was work by Tanguy, Marc Chagall, Henry Varnum Poor, Stuart Davis, Walt Kuhn and Max Weber.

In 1955 Perkins received a two-year fellowship from the School of International Painting in Segovia, Spain. For the next four years Perkins lived, painted and exhibited on the isle of Ibiza. Perkins returned to Paris to live and paint in 1959. Two years later he returned to Nashville where he died of cancer in 1970 at age 63. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio and the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, among others.