Description:

Kenneth Marcus Hugh
Ohio, (1916-2011)
Autumn Harvest, 1943
oil on canvas
Signed and dated lower right.

Biography from the Archives of askART: Born Hugh Kenneth Marcus on August 14, 1916, he dropped the Hugh and was Kenneth Marcus for most of his childhood and young adulthood. He started painting at the age of five and took private art lessons. He was sketching portraits and figures by the time he was twelve. He graduated from Charles F. Brush High School in 1935 and then attended The Cleveland School of Art on a scholarship, graduating in 1939. He was awarded the President's Traveling Scholarship upon graduation, but turned it down for unknown reasons. He then pursued his dreams of painting portraits, watercolors and oils, printmaking and silk screen designs. He added Hugh to the end of his name after marrying fellow classmate, Mary Agnes Matousek, in 1941, thus becoming Kenneth Marcus Hugh for the remainder of his life.

Hugh won awards in many juried shows including Cleveland May shows starting in the 1930's, at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio, the Fine Arts Association of Willoughby, Beck Center for the Arts, Cleveland Jr. Chamber of Commerce Art Show and the Cleveland Artists Guild. Other juried shows include the 33rd Traveling Exhibit of Water Colors by Cleveland Artists, the Cleveland May Show Artists Traveling Exhibit, the Cleveland Jewish Community Center, the Contemporary Arts Gallery in New York City (1947), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Dayton Print Show.

He had many one man shows in local galleries and his work hangs in the corporate collections of B.P. America, Holland Hitch of New Jersey, Spencer Manufacturing, and Underwood Canneries of Boston, Massachusetts.

Hugh was interested in motion and color and the interaction of it. He has said, "I invite the eye to enjoy a tide pool of kaleidoscopic colors, the dynamic and tranquil faces of nature, as well as the vibrant and disquieting mood of the urban scene." Helen Cullinan, former art critic for the Cleveland "Plain Dealer" once likened the "quick line and spontaneous distortions" of Hugh's work to the spirit of Red Grooms, Stuart Davis and Reginald Marsh.

Hugh assisted Carl Gaertner in teaching water color at the Cleveland School of Art in the summers of 1943 and 1944.

He taught life class and water color painting at the Jewish Community Center in the late 1930's for the Council Educational Alliance.

Some of his instructors at the Cleveland School of Art were :
Glen Shaw, Rolf Stoll, Joseph Rogozin, and Michael Rothenstein

In his later years, Hugh exhibited his work at the Erie Art Museum in Pennsylvania, the Valley Art Center in Chagrin Falls, and Baycrafters in Bay Village until his death at the age of 94 on February 11, 2011.

(Hugh had four children and lived with his wife, Mary Agnes Matousek (also a 1939 graduate of The Cleveland School of Art) in South Euclid, Ohio for sixty-nine years.)

Kenneth Marcus Hugh
1939 graduate of Cleveland School of Art

  • Dimensions: 17 1/2"H x 24 1/2"W (sight)
  • Medium: oil on canvas

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October 7, 2023 11:00 AM EDT
Indianapolis, IN, US

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