Professionally framed in gold wood frame with label from Krasner Gallery, 1061 Madison Avenue. Image size 29” x 9.5”. framed 35.5” x 15.5”.

Painter, graphic artist, writer, and teacher Albert William Christ-Janer was born in Appleton, Minnesota. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, Yale University, and Harvard University. Christ-Janer wrote about American artists Boardman Robinson and John Caleb Bingham, and taught at a variety of institutions, including Stephens College, Cranbrook Academy, Pratt Institute Art School, and the University of Georgia. He was also an artist-in-residence at Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1972. In died in 1973 in Como, Italy.

An avid printmaker, Christ-Janer developed personal working methods that often involved a good deal of risk and uncertainty. Through his experimentations he created a range of tones and textures that deepen and enliven his abstract forms. Nature was always his starting point, and he once stated,

His works are in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and other major museum collections.

According to New York Times Art Critic, John Canaday, “Mr. Christ-Janer belongs to the generation that decided, with such good reason, that figurative painting was washed up. (His own decision is a recent one, arrived at since his last year's exhibition.) He believes that the painter's job is to concentrate on the abstractions of form and color that (the argument goes) are the heart of painting anyway. Nature is still somewhat recalled in his deft compositions - if not the actual look of nature, then the forces of nature, such as gravity that makes paint run downward and osmosis that can make it run upward.

Mr. Christ-Janer shares with Mr. Jamison, however, this fascination with what paint will do just as paint. Mr. Jamison is always disguising his fascination, but anyone can see that much of the joy he takes in his painting, and much of the observer's pleasure, too comes from the artist's ability to make his brush do just what he wants it to. The revealed textures of paper, the controlled yet always emphasized wateriness of the water-color - these are pure joys to him. But at the same time, the quick touch of the brush that is pure painting must also be, he insists, a part of the literal description of an object. This is not, but should be, known as the Siamese Twin Esthetic.

Mr. Christ-Janer has successfully separated the twins and has thrown away the descriptive one. As a result, he has been free to indulge in one hell of a good time with his brush, manipulating the pigment in whatever way he wants and holding, of course, to the principle that this is really more difficult to do than to use descriptive reference as a crutch. Whether or not he is right, is what people have been arguing about ever since abstract art was born.”

Albert Christ-Janer (1910-1973)
"Sky Scape"

Mixed Media on Board

Artist, Educator & Author