Schindler-Weston-Franz Geritz-Arthur Millier Connections

Franz Geritz, 1920. Photo by Edward Weston. © 1981 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents.

This post is just a quick Franz Geritz vignette indicative of the countless mutual friendships of Pauline and Rudolph Schindler and Edward Weston and his family. To begin to see a much deeper picture of their fascinating lives and intertwined circles of bohemian friends, follow the links embedded in the footnotes below. (For much on the initial meeting of the Schindlers and the Westons see my "The Schindlers and the Westons and the Walt Whitman School.").

Schindler-Chace House, 835 Kings Road, West Hollywood, R. M. Schindler, architect, 1922. UC-Santa Barbara Schindler Collection.

Antony Anderson, 1919. Edward Weston photograph. From De Rome, A. T.,  "A Few Pictures Reviewed: Illustrations from California Liberty Fair Exhibition," Camera Craft, March 1919, p. 89. © 1981 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents. (Author's note: For much more on Antony Anderson and his rivalry with Schindler-Weston friend Ramiel McGehee over the charms of Olive Percival see my "Bertha Wardell Dances in Silence: Kings Road, Olive Hill, and Carmel").

Just two weeks after photographer Edward Weston and his entourage, which perhaps included Margrethe Mather, Johan Hagemeyer,and Betty Katz visited the Schindler’s recently completed Kings Road House for the first time and ten days after the birth of their son Mark, L. A. Times art critic Antony Anderson (see above) reviewed the Los Angeles Museum exhibition of mutual friend Franz Geritz. At the time Geritz was also doing freelance illustration work for the Times. Anderson particularly singled out for praise Geritz's portrait of Weston,

“Especially interesting to me are the various impressions in color that the artist has taken of the portrait of Edward Weston, all of them experimental except the last one, which is exactly the scheme of color that Geritz thinks suits best the Weston temperament and personality. The artist is never satisfied till he has struck what may be called the right color note. And then we have added to the beauty of lines, the beauty of harmony in color. In brief, a little portrait, simple and forceful, that is also a fine work of art.” (Antony Anderson, “Of Art and Artists, Los Angeles Times, July 30, 1922).

Edward Weston, 1922. Franz Geritz. Bancroft Library, UC-Berkeley.

Geritz also included portraits of others in Weston's orbit such as Billy Justema and Margrethe Mather (see below) in his first one-man show at the Exposition Park venue. 

Edward Weston, ca. 1922. Photo by Margrethe Mather and Johan Hagemeyer. © 1981 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents. Note the similarities between this portrait of Weston by Johan Hagemeyer and Margrethe Mather with the above Geritz wood block print. Geritz may have even used the photo as a model.

Billy Justema by Margrethe Mather, 1922. From Margrethe Mather Collection, © 1981 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents. (Author's note: Justema performed in the 1923 Pilgrimage Play alongside other Mather-Weston-Schindler intimates Reginald Pole, Otto Matiesen, and Helen Freeman. For much more on this see my "Edward Weston, R. M. Schindler, Anna Zacsek, Lloyd Wright, Reginald Pole and Their Dramatic Circles". For more on Justema's role in introducing pianist-composers Richard Buhlig and Henry Cowell into the Mather-Weston-Schindler orbit see my "Schindlers-Westons-Kashevaroff-Cage").

Margrethe Mather, etching by Franz Geritz, 1922. From LACMA.

Margrethe Mather, c. 1916. Photo by Edward Weston. From Edward Weston Collection, © 1981 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents.

Arthur Millier, 1929 by Edward Weston. From Edward Weston Collection, © 1981 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents.

Noted etcher Arthur Millier's equally well-received exhibition ran concurrently with Geritz's at the Los Angeles Museum. Millier, who a month earlier had been named the first Southern California winner of the California Society of Etcher's Prize, would go on to replace Anderson as the Times art critic in 1926 and champion the work of Weston, Schindler, Richard Neutra and many others from their illustrious circle including numerous reviews of Geritz's work (see later below for example). (Anderson, Antony, "Of Art and Artists," Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1922, p. III-27). 

Adding to the exciting and eventful summer of 1922 for the Schindlers, painter Walter Ufer, a close friend of RMS's from their Chicago Palette & Chisel Club days, had a one-man show at the Los Angeles Museum hard on the heels of the Geritz and Millier exhibitions. If Ufer, who Schindler visited "on location" in Taos in 1915, made it out for the opening there would have undoubtedly been a raucous reunion at Kings Road. (Anderson, Antony, "Of Art and Artists," Los Angeles Times, August, 13, 1922, p. III-27. For much more on the Ufer-Schindler, and Weston-Schindler-Taos connections see my "Edward Weston and Mabel Dodge Luhan Remember D. H. Lawrence and Selected Carmel-Taos Connections").

"From Ox Cart to Airplane," Franz Geritz, The Carmelite, November 12, 1928, p. 1. Courtesy Harrison Memorial Library, Carmel.

Pauline Schindler would later feature the work of mutual friend Geritz on the November 12, 1928 cover of The Carmelite during her editorship in 1928-29. Lifelong friend Weston would be tapped by Pauline as a contributing editor after his move into Johan Hagemeyer's studio in Carmel the following month. (For much more on Pauline's life after separating from RMS and departing Kings Road in 1927 see my "Pauline Gibling Schindler: Vagabond Agent for Modernism.")

The Carmelite masthead from 1929.

Braxton Gallery, Hollywood, 1929, R. M. Schindler, architect. Viroque Baker photos. UC-Santa Barbara Art, Architecture and Design Museum, Schindler Collection.

Further evidence of Geritz's longtime involvement in the Schindler-Weston circle is his one-man show at the Schindler-designed Braxton Gallery the following year shortly after it opened (see above). Braxton featured the work of Geritz in November 1929, sandwiching him between shows of mutual close friends Peter Krasnow in September and Weston himself in January 1930. Galka Scheyer, the Blue Four dealer who convinced Braxton to commission Schindler to design his new gallery, would obtain consecutive exhibitions her charges Kandinsky, Klee, Jawlensky and Feininger shortly thereafter. Braxton's Gallery became an eagerly anticipated stop for Times art critic Arthur Millier who was a big supporter of those in the Weston-Schindler orbit. (For much more on this see my "Richard Neutra and the California Art Club.").

(Millier, Arthur, "Work by Geritz is Alive and Vigorous," Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1929, p. 16.)