Monday, August 15, 2022 – ONE OF THE MANY ARTISTS WHO THRIVED WITH WORK DONE UNDER THE W.P.A.

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Werner Drewes

Name Werner DrewesBorn Canig, GermanyDied Reston, VirginiaBborn Canig, Germany (now Kaniów, Poland) 1899-died Reston, VA 1985Nationalities American 

Werner Drewes was born in Canig, Germany, and began studying art in 1920 at the Stuttgart School of Architecture. A year later he transferred to the Stuttgart School of Arts and Crafts. From 1921 to 1922, he studied with Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, and Oskar Schlemmer at the Bauhaus in Weimar. After visiting the United States in 1924 and 1925, Drewes returned to work at the Bauhaus. In 1930 he came back to the United States, where he was introduced by Wassily Kandinsky to Katherine C. Dreier, a founder of the Societe Anonyme, and exhibited his work in Buffalo, New York. From 1934 to 1936, Drewes taught at the Brooklyn Museum under the auspices of the WPA Federal Art Project. In 1936, the year he became an American citizen, Drewes joined the American Artists Congress, exhibited at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and helped found the American Abstract Artists group. A member of the faculty at Columbia University in New York from 1937 to 1940, Drewes also served as director of graphic art for the WPA Federal Art Project in New York in 1940. In 1944 he studied printmaking at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17. The following year he taught at Brooklyn College. In 1946 he joined the faculty of the School of Fine Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, where he remained until 1965. 

FROM THE ARCHIVES

MONDAY,  AUGUST 15,   2022



THE  754th   EDITION

WERNER

DREWES

ABSTRACTIONIST ARTIST

Werner Drewes, Pointed Brown and Floating Circles, 1933, oil, pen and ink, and pencil on wood panel, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Patricia and Phillip Frost, 1986.92.17

Werner Drewes, Black Curve on Yellow Horizontally Connected (Variation), 1938, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Wolfram U. Drewes, Harald Drewes and Bernard W. Drewes, 1990.105.55

Werner Drewes, Loose Contact, 1938, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Wolfram U. Drewes, Harald Drewes and Bernard W. Drewes, 1990.105.40

Werner Drewes, Still Life with Bananas, 1952, color woodcut and celloprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Wolfram U. Drewes, Harald Drewes and Bernard W. Drewes, 1990.105.10

Werner Drewes, Industrial, 1961, color woodcut on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Wolfram U. Drewes, Harald Drewes and Bernard W. Drewes, 1990.105.15

Werner Drewes, Stepping Up, 1984,Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Wolfram U. Drewes, Harald Drewes and Bernard W. Drewes, 1990.105.27

There are over 200 images of the works of Werner Drewes on the Smithsonian American Art Museum website:

https://americanart.si.edu/artist/werner-drewes-1344

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Text by Judith Berdy
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Edited by Deborah Dorff
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