Georgina Klitgaard

"Spring Ploughing" Georgina Klitgaard, Modernist American Farmed Landscape

Circa 1940s

Georgina Berrian was born in Spuyten Duyvil, New York in 1893. She was educated at Barnard College and studied at the National Academy of Design in New York. She married the Danish-born mariner, artist, and writer Kaj Klitgaard in 1919. After visiting friends in Woodstock, the couple became committed to the area and built a home in 1922 in Bearsville which provided a panoramic view of the mountains and valleys of Woodstock. Georgina Klitgaard's first exhibition in New York was held at the Whitney Studio Club from Dec.20, 1927 to January 7, 1928. Klitgaard's New York dealer was the Frank Rehn Galleries, where she began to exhibit in the 1930s, continuing that relationship into the 1950s. In 1939 and again in 1940 she had solo exhibitions with the Milch Gallery in New York. By the late 1920s, Klitgaard began to show works at museum invitationals. She sent work to the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania each year from 1928 to 1949. The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC invited Klitgaard to exhibit each year from 1930 to 1945. Klitgaard also exhibited works at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia from 1930 to 1945 annually. Klitgaard was also invited to exhibit regularly at the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1927 to 1944. In the 1936 works on paper component of the Whitney Biennial, Klitgaard exhibited Florida Landscape (No.116, a work on paper). In 1944 Klitgaard exhibited another Florida work, Early Spring, Florida (No. 7) at the Whitney. Based on this information, it seems likely that Klitgaard began to visit Florida in the winter during the 1930s and continued to do so until the 1940s. Many of her Woodstock artist friends, such as Doris Lee (1905-1983), found a way to spend time in Florida during the winter on a regular basis. Their experiences in Florida may have influenced Klitgaard to visit. In 1933 Georgina Klitgaard received a Guggenheim Fellowship which provided funds to travel in Europe. In 1940 the family traveled around the U.S. while Kaj, himself now the recipient of a Guggenheim, wrote Through the American Landscape. During the Depression she was selected to paint murals in post offices in Pelham, Georgia and Goshen (1937) and Poughkeepsie (1940) in Upstate New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired Girl and Child Under A Pine Tree, a colorful portrait, in 1939. By the 1940s Klitgaard's work was also in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Newark Museum; the New Britain Museum of American Art; and the Dayton Art Institute, as well as other public and private collections. Klitgaard was a member of the Audubon Artists and the American Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Gravers. She had a studio in New York City located at 659 Fifth Avenue. Klitgaard died in 1976. The bulk of her exhibited subjects were painted around the Woodstock or Bearsville area.