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Charley Harper (August 4, 1922 – June 10, 2007) was a Cincinnati-based American Modernist artist. He was best known for his highly stylized wildlife prints, posters and book illustrations. Born in Frenchton, West Virginia in 1922, Harper's upbringing on his family farm influenced his work to his last days. He left his farm home to study art at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and won the academy’s first Stephen H. Wilder Traveling Scholarship. Also during his time at the Academy, and supposedly on the first day, Charley met fellow artist Edie Mckee, whom he would marry shortly after graduation in 1947. Charley and Edie spent their honeymoon traveling the country, mainly in the west and south, being able to do so because of the Stephen H. Wilder Scholarship the Academy awarded to Charley for post-graduate travels. Charley Harper returned to the Art Academy of Cincinnati as a teacher and also worked for a commercial firm before working on his own. He and his wife worked out of their Roselawn and Finneytown homes, and later, with their only child Brett Harper, formed Harper Studios. During his career, Charley Harper illustrated numerous books, notably ''The Golden Book of Biology'', magazines such as ''Ford Times'', as well as many prints, posters, and other works. As his subjects are mainly natural, with birds prominently featured, Charley often created works for many nature-based organizations, among them the National Park Service; Cincinnati Zoo; Cincinnati Nature Center; Hamilton County (Ohio) Park District; and Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania. He also designed interpretive displays for Everglades National Park. Charley Harper died on Sunday, June 10, 2007 at age 84 after contending with pneumonia for some months.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Artist Charley Harper dies )〕 == Style == In a style he called "minimal realism", Charley Harper captured the essence of his subjects with the fewest possible visual elements. When asked to describe his unique visual style, Charley responded:
He contrasted his nature-oriented artwork with the realism of John James Audubon, drawing influence from Cubism, Minimalism, Einsteinian physics and countless other developments in Modern art and science. His style distilled and simplified complex organisms and natural subjects, yet they are often arranged in a complex fashion. On the subject of his simplified forms, Harper noted:
The results are bold, colorful, and often whimsical. The designer Todd Oldham wrote of Harper, "Charley’s inspired yet accurate color sense is undeniable, and when combined with the precision he exacts on rendering only the most important details, one is always left with a sense of awe." Charley, on numerous examples, also went outside the medium of graphic art and included short prose poems for the artwork he made. Examples of Harper's style may be seen in the example above, as well as the following United States National Park Service posters: Image:alpine nw.jpg Image:canyon ctry.jpg Image:sierra range.jpg Image:Barrier islands.jpg In 2002 his artwork was selected for the International Migratory Bird Day conservation theme- Exploring Habitats. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Charley Harper」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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