Arnold Blanch

African American Sitting Portrait

Born in Mantorville, Minnesota, Arnold Blanch was a painter of scenes of social-realist American life with mystical overtones and a child-like seeming style. He was also a highly respected teacher, lecturer and visiting critic and was a spokesman for the art colony in Woodstock, New York. He was married to Lucile Blanch. Unlike many of his generation, he seemed disinterested in avant-garde styles and held to his own approach with canvases that were happy and somewhat romantic in subject matter. In the 1930s, he was a muralist for the Federal Art Project and did work in post offices in Fredonia, New York and Norwalk, Connecticut. He first studied at the Minneapolis School of Arts, and from 1921 to 1922 was at the Art Students League in New York City, studying with Kenneth Hayes Miller, John Sloan, and Robert Henri. He also studied with Boardman Robinson, whose invitation he accepted to teach in Colorado Springs at the Colorado Fine Arts Center school. He took seriously their assertions that an artist should paint from his own experiences and environment. He was a member of the American Artists Congress, the Association of American Artists, the American Watercolor Society, and the Painters, Sculptors, Gravers Society of America, which he also served as president.