For my first post, I have decided to focus on a thread that will permeate the life of this blog: Women Creatives. Initially, I wanted to simply say, “women in the arts”. However, that didn’t quite illustrate the intrigue that consumes me about women in the arts. Of course, art is a driving force for me. But it is more than just the art work itself yet, it is the creative force, the backstory, that produced the work that I find fascinating.
I plan to focus on creativity and all its glory from both women and men. But I also want to highlight the female creative force that is often undervalued, underrepresented, but undeniably fabulous.
In this post, I met Magda Pach, who brought me Frida Kahlo.
Until I saw this portrait of Frida Kahlo on the 3rd floor of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, I had not heard of Magda Pach. According to the wall placard, Magda Pach was a supporter of Mexican art in the US during the 1920s and 1930s. Of course, I wanted to know what inspired her to do so.
The search to answer what was her interest in Mexican art in the US turned up very little for me. As a matter of fact, it turned up very little about Magda Pach in general. I found a plethora of information on her husband, Walter Pach, and his attributes to the art world and on the painter who painter her portrait, Jacques Villon (aka Gaston Duchamp, the older brother of Marcel Duchamp), but very little about Magda.
I did learn that she was born in Dresden, Germany in either 1884 or 1864 (interestingly enough, I found two different dates). She studied art under the French Cubist painter Jean Marchand in Paris and the National Academy, Mexico City. It appears that her exposure and subsequent interest in Mexican artist may have developed at this time of study, which may have been during a time when she moved to the west coast while her husband, who taught in California and Mexico City, in the 1920s.
She is described as a portraitist, painter and lithographer. However, the only image that I can definitively attribute to Magda is the image of Frida Kahlo that I snapped and show above from the National Portrait Gallery.
But, I know that she produced.
I found a reference on the Maine based Bowdoin College website (http://community.bowdoin.edu/news/2018/05/collections-of-marion-boulton-kippy-stroud-and-walter-pach-gifted-to-the-bowdoin-college-museum-of-art/) that referenced their collection of Pach works, including 34 Magda pieces. Unfortunately, a search of the college art gallery’s site did not turn up anything on her.
Additionally, I found a reference to her being a member of the Society of Independent Artists and the New York Society of Women Artists. One particular reference credited her with presenting her work during a 1934 exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists. (Three Current Exhibitions. (1934). Parnassus, 6(4), 11-11. doi:10.2307/771050).
Even though a Google image search turned up lots of images, some plausible for the time and genre, most were random, unconnected and a little weird (the expected from a basic Google search).
I am very curious to see more examples of Magda’s work and learn more about her backstory. Hopefully, she will be fodder for future posts.
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