10: ARTHUR KRAFT (1922-1977) IMPORTANT EARLY MURAL ON BOARD

Arthur M. Kraft (1922-1977)
Untitled: A Soldier's Surreal Reverie (Early to mid 1940s.)
The small mural in oils painted on a type of fiber board in two sections is signed 'Art Kraft' lower right.

Kansas City artist Arthur Kraft is best known as a late 20th century Expressionist. With the discovery of this early work, a known gap in his style progression is filled. One of his biographers refers to, ''a short-lived realist period in the 1940s'' but few examples exist, none more definitive than this. Not to break character, Arthur's brand of Realism steeped in the surreal.

The backstory for this small mural is not known. What is known is that Arthur Kraft served in WWII as Private First Class with the Air Corps in the Pacific, assigned work as an artist with the Fifth Air Force. It is also known that he was awarded First Prize in the 1945 Army Arts Exhibition in San Francisco. A $100 war bond was given to the winner in each of 8 classes: oil and tempera, watercolor and gouache, sculpture, renderings, drawings, prints, photographs - and mural design.

Even in 'Realism', Arthur Kraft went surreal. Of this, his mother delivers a delightfully amusing quote, ''Arthur always just ruins a painting for me that way,'' she sighed. ''The picture will be pretty and then he'll put in an evil eye or a black bird picking at an eyeball. He says, though that it's to remind people that there is a thorn in every rose.'' Her lament for pretty pictures was likely echoed a great deal after World War Two.

Just before the War, Arthur Kraft had graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City where, as a freshman, he won third prize in a youth forum art contest populated by entries from 280,000 students from across the nation. He then received a one-year scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute, followed by studies at the Yale University School of Fine Arts on a second scholarship. With just six months to go at Yale, he was drafted into military service. After the War, he returned to get his degree and finish his monumental kaleidoscopic panorama of a New York neighborhood with its sixteen-word title and cutaway sections of the city's neighborhoods - a painting six years in the making that won him the Fifth Annual Audubon artist exhibition in New York City in 1946.

Arthur Kraft went on to win many awards, and numerous public commissions. He was delightfully eccentric and, depending on your approach to life, some might see him as having lived refreshingly carefree at times. Others might call it irresponsible. Conversely, it appears life may have also been very intense for Arthur. These complexities sometimes overshadowed his brilliant artistic career.
Frame measures 60.5 x 84 inches.
Very good just found in storage condition, noting scattered rubs, dry surface, shrinkage of the two panels the work is painted on, minor light effects of age and storage. There are no issues of damage, repair, serious losses, inpainting or alteration.
$3,000 - $5,000