JULIE HELLER GALLERIES

ADELAIDE LAWSON GAYLOR  (1889 - 1986) 

 

Modernist painter Adelaide Lawson Gaylor was born in New York City, studied at the Art Students League with Kenneth Hayes Miller, and was an active member in the Harlem Renaissance.  Gaylor was also a member of the Society of Independent Artists and the Salons of America, where she exhibited, as well as a founding member of the New York Society of Women Artists.  

 

She was said to possess an ability to build surface harmony through the use of flat, shadowless forms of generalized color and to use distortion and silhouetted patterning so as to give observers a sense of animation and often amusement.

 

In 1926 Adelaide Lawson married artist Wood Gaylor, who studied with Walt Kuhn at the National Academy of Design and exhibited with him in the 1913 Armory Show.  Both Gaylors  were very active in the New York art world in the early 20th century and their friends included artists John Dos Passos, William and Marguerite Zorach, Jules Pascin, Stefan Hirsch and Walt Kuhn. Lawson and Gaylor moved to Glenwood Landing, Long Island in 1932, gave art classes and mounted exhibitions in their barn.