Paintings by Carol Blanchard and Karl Priebe, November 12-December 8, 1946

Carol Blanchard was an American artist born in Springfield, Massachusetts about 1918. She spent her early childhood in Holyoke and later moved with her family to Scarsdale, New York. In 1936, she entered Colby Junior College in New London, New Hampshire, but soon after returned to New York and studied lithography and etching for a year at the Art Students League. Beginning in 1938, she devoted herself entirely to painting. Not long before her 1946 exhibition at the Legion of Honor she married Dustic Rice, a sculptor. She called herself a Fantasist painter, creating wistful and Victorian artworks. She worked for many years in the advertising department of Lord & Taylor, setting the classic 1960s style for the bridal shop of their flagship New York City store. She died about 1980.

Karl Priebe was an American painter whose studies and paintings of birds, exotic animals, and African-American culture won him international recognition. He was born on July 1, 1914 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated from the Layton School of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating from the latter in 1938. After serving on the anthropology staff of the Milwaukee Public Museum from 1938 to 1942 and as director of the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts from 1943 to 1944, he returned to Layton as an instructor in 1947. He was one of the few Wisconsin artists of his generation to escape the regionalist label, instead calling himself a Fantasist, and showed his art in prestigious galleries and museums across the U.S. He drew the inspiration for his works from numerous locations. His paintings of exotic animals can be attributed to his numerous trips to the Milwaukee County Zoo while attending Layton. He first became interested in African-American culture when, as an art student in Chicago, he taught a class in a settlement house largely attended by African Americans. His black figures, he recalled later, were not intended as portraits, but were taken from his memories of people he saw in the settlement house. He was the only Milwaukeean ever to receive the Prix de Rome, an honor accorded to him in 1941. Because of wartime conditions he was unable to use the grant to study in Europe. Throughout his creative life Priebe was known for his love of Black culture. He was a longtime friend of such jazz greats as Billie Holiday, Pearl Bailey and Dizzy Gillespie and of painters Gertrude Abercrombie and John Wilde. In his later years Priebe suffered from a number of ailments. In November 1975 he had one of his eyes surgically removed. After that his health began to decline. He died at his home in Milwaukee after a long struggle with cancer on July 5, 1976, at the age of 62.

Sources:
Carol Blanchard at the James Vigeveno Galleries. Westwood Hills, Arizona: James Vigeveno Galleries, 1946. Exhibition catalogue.
Karl Priebe at the James Vigeveno Galleries. Westwood Hills, Arizona: James Vigeveno Galleries, 1946. Exhibition catalogue.
https://www.sulisfineart.com/carol-blanchard-contemporary-coloured-print-summer-ng621.html#description
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Priebe