WOLFS Gallery owner Michael Wolf is an advocate not just for his hometown but also for a group of Northeast Ohio artists he says deserves more recognition.
The Cleveland School is a little-known group of artists from the early 20th century loosely affiliated with what鈥檚 known today as the Cleveland Institute of Art.
Many either taught or studied at the Cleveland School of Art such as Frank Nelson Wilcox, August Frederick Biehle, Clara Deike, Hughie Lee-Smith and Viktor Schreckengost.
Some received notoriety at the time well beyond the region. But the spotlight has generally faded on the group over time.
Wolf is a champion for elevating the Cleveland School out of obscurity, by both collecting and exhibiting their work.
After almost a decade of discussion and two years of concentrated planning, WOLFS Gallery in Beachwood is showing an exhibition of Cleveland School artist William Sommer.
The show is made up largely of paintings from the collection of retired Cleveland Museum of Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Martin Lerner.
Now that Lerner has also recently retired from collecting, he and Wolf agreed that now was the time to showcase William Sommer.
William Sommer retrospective
Originally from Detroit, William Sommer worked as a professional lithographer in Cleveland making movie and entertainment posters for the Otis Lithograph company.
His day job allowed him to paint landscapes and portraits at his Ohio homes in Lakewood and Brandywine.
Longtime Cleveland art curator William Robinson authored the exhibition鈥檚 catalog essay.
鈥淸William Sommer] is really an interpreter of the Ohio landscape,鈥� Robinson said. 鈥淏ut he sees it through the lens of advanced European Modernism.鈥�
Wolf compares Sommer to a jazz musician working on a canvas.
鈥淸Sommer鈥檚] incredible ability to reproduce, to draft anything that he wishes and with emotion,鈥� Wolf said. 鈥淛ust fantastic compositions. The color, the line, it's just amazing.鈥�
鈥溾�� features more than 100 of the Northeast Ohio artist鈥檚 works from 1890 to 1945. The retrospective is on view at WOLFS Gallery through August 15.
Sommer in Brandywine
A highlight of the show is Sommer鈥檚 paintings of his home in Brandywine with recurring imagery of the interurban train bridge, Brandywine Falls and his neighbor鈥檚 farm.
鈥淭he subjects are - it's funny - they're somewhat mundane until he begins to handle them,鈥� Wolf said. 鈥淏ut by the time he's executed his composition, it just comes alive.鈥�
Sommer鈥檚 Brandywine home also emerged as an artistic haven for fellow creatives in the 1910 to 1920s.
鈥淚t became a really important meeting place for advanced artists, musicians, writers, people like Hart Crane, the great poet, they came to Brandywine, [painter] Charles Burchfield came to Brandywine,鈥� Robinson said. 鈥淭his was a kind of locus of modernist activity in Cleveland.鈥�
Despite receiving praise and admiration from his peers, Sommer never achieved the national recognition for his art that they did.
鈥淭hat's largely because he was determined to stay in Ohio, and he was never ever interested in promoting himself in publicity, even locally,鈥� Robinson said.
Michael Wolf is determined to do the opposite.
"We're knee deep in William Sommer works right now and nothing could be more gratifying," he said.
