Yellow Meadows (The Home of The Artist on South Platte River Near Bailey, Colo.)
Year 1930s
Artist Frank Vavra (1892–1967, American)
Media oil on canvas
Dimensions 24 x 30 inches
Frank Vavra was born in St. Paul, Nebraska and moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming at about eight years old. He enlisted in World War I in 1917 and was gassed in the Argonne Forest in France in the summer of 1918. Recuperating in Vichy, he used painting as therapy and studied with Pilan, a student of Claude Monet. He moved to Denver for serious art study in 1923 and enrolled in the Denver Art Academy from 1924 to 1926 where he studied with John Thompson, George William Eggers and Robert Alexander Graham. He married fellow art student Kathleen Huffman (1906–1984) and in 1928 they moved to Insmont, Colorado, near Bailey, where they raised their three children. In 1942 they returned to Denver, retaining the home in Insmont, and Vavra taught art at the University of Denver from 1944 to 1949. Vavra was one of relatively few artists to move successfully from realism to abstraction and he was a founding member of the reactionary painting group 15 Colorado Artists in 1948. The Vavras moved back to Insmont full time in 1960. Frank passed away in Denver in 1967.
ON VIEW in Promenade Gallery 2
Signature Signed "Frank J Vavra" lower right corner
Credit Line Collection Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art
Accession Number 2012.0284
