Fuller Potter's Expressionist Period: Disquieting portraits reflecting the lingering mood of the Great Depression |
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Born in 1910, Fuller Potter did experience the Great Depression, particularly as he was painting in Tennessee, in the isolated, poverty stricken Appalachian Region. At the same time, he apparently was influenced by the Austrian Secession and German Expressionism movements. During this period, he produced a large number of portraits, which have a similar disturbing quality as those of Egon Schiele, or even, those of Edward Munch. These portraits, devoid of happiness, in a subtle way convey distress and ambiguous feelings, sometimes with a streak of insanity, and reflect the sadness, pensiveness, resentment, fear, resignation, and altogether the pervasive human misery of the times. This was not the America that we know, but a scary and depressed world, that Fuller Potter obsessively, relentlessly insisted to capture in paint, without compromise nor flattery. Most of these portraits, such as those shown on this page, all unsigned, untitled, and undated, as by pudor or modesty, are now collector items. They attracted few takers at the yard sales. Fuller Potter never lost interest in portraits. Later in his life, he turned to painting less loaded, more childlike, frail and innocent faces, possibly driven by the calm and serenity of Alice, whom he painted extensively, with a lot of love. Through the eighties, Fuller kept very much involved in the portrait genre, this time with a multimedia twist. He abundantly used the Polaroid camera for multiple exposure, printing faces simultaneously viewed from different angles, and inserting them in a poetic scene, as done by Picasso, but obviously without Picasso's famous face "cubistic" distortions and deformations. |
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All pictures are Copyright Ovadia Salama and may not be reproduced without our express consent. For reproduction rights, including any on the Internet, please contact us at our Email address: ovadia.salama@gmail.com, or |
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Several pictures are captured from Video Tapes by Elaine Mills |
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