Permanent Collection - Ben Taylor

Art Benoit Watercolor

This watercolor was purchased at Benoit ‘s exhibit at FAA, and given in memory of Esther Stever. Benoit was born in Nov. 3, 1922 in Warren, Ohio and was tutored in art as a child by Salvini Guaneri. For many years he was active in commercial art and held position of art director for an international corporation. During two years competitions with Abercrombie & Fitch of N.Y. and VL and A of Chicago, Benoit won seven first prizes and no less than third in national contests for window display designs. He was president of Central Iowa Art Assoc. and served as juror for many art exhibits. He was listed in ”Who’s who in the Midwest”. The State of Iowa selected Benoit’s art to give to the Pope when he came to visit Des Moines. Benoit ‘s FAA exhibit catalog in 1971 stated: Arthur J. Benoit attended Nottingham School of Art in England and later graduated from School of Art Institute in Chicago. His illustrations have appeared in Life Magazine, Saturday Evening Post and Readers Digest. He has had several one-man shows in Iowa & represented in collections throughout the U.S. He teaches painting for Area Six Community College in Marshalltown, where he resides and maintains a studio. Benoit does landscapes as well as portraits.

Ray Frederick Painting

Marion J.Kitzman Painting

This oil painting was purchased by the FAA for its permanent Collection in 1968 when Kitzman had a one-man exhibit at our gallery. At that time his exhibit catalog lists the following: M. J. Kitzman, an Iowa native, work is widely exhibited, fifteen one man shows in Midwest. His work is included in collections of Joslyn Museum, Tacoma Art Museum, Sioux City Art Center, Stephens College, Augustana College & others. Awards from – Sioux City Seven State Show, Iowa Artists Annual, Iowa & Illinois State Fairs, Midwest Biennial etc. He received BA from Drake University and Masters of Arts from San Francisco State College, with additional graduate work at Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, U of Iowa, and U of Illinois. He was currently Associate Professor of Art and Artist in Residence, Dept. of Architecture at Iowa State University. 1966-67 Chairman of Art Dept., Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. Prior to that Assistant Professor of Art at University of Iowa. Visiting artist at Rochester Art Center in MN, and Joslyn Museum in Omaha, NB, an instructor at Des Moines Art Center, San Francisco State College and University of Northern Iowa.

Stanley Hess Painting

This painting was featured in one of several early exhibits at the FAA titled “Potpourri” from the Des Moines Art Center Rental Gallery. These exhibits provided primarily Iowa Artists, extensively trained and widely exhibited professionals. All works were for sale. This particular piece was purchased in 1970 for the FAA Permanent Collection. Stanley Hess was born in Weatherford, Oklahoma on July 8, 1923. As a child, he was educated at the St. Patrick’s Indian Mission in Anadarko, Oklahoma. The only white male child among Indian students, Hess remembered enriched learning. Hess attended the University of Oklahoma and was a contemporary of Oscar Brousse Jacobson Jr. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1948 and Master of Fine Arts in 1950. Internet text:“American Professor of art at Drake University (1951-1985); as a painter he is known for portraying mysterious and haunting subjects in a dry, graphic and surreal style that carries on the magic-realist strain that first took hold in American art in the 1940s; as a muralist he has worked in mosaic, ceramic tile, brick, plexiglas and stone; he has also turned his hand to woodcarving and instrument making; and he is the designer of Tempered Notation, a way of writing human language specifically attuned to American English, in which the pronunciation of words is precisely represented and can be accurately reproduced by anyone who can read it. Hess was born in 1923 and currently resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with work featured in the Pierson Gallery featuring American Fine Art.

Anne Hovey Painting

Anne Hovey is a Des Moines artist, who lived in Fairfield during the 1970s, and exhibited this painting at the FAA in a 1968 one person show. With a B.S. degree in applied arts from Iowa State, she studied painting at the Des Moines Art Center with Robert Freimark, Henry Varnum Poore, James Ernst, Stephen Greene, Jules Kischenbaum & Cornelius Ruthenberg. The artist exhibited extensively in Iowa & Midwest, winning awards: Motorola Regional, 1st in oil at Art Salon at Iowa State Fair, Mid Mississippi Valley Exhibit, Rock Island Fine Arts Exhibition, designated “Wagners Printers Selection” and featured on Northwestern Bell Telephone calendar. While in Fairfield, Anne served on the FAA Board’s Education Committee and mentored local artist Suzan Bates Kessel. “Anne achieves her interesting patterns and luscious colors by washes of color. This consists of coats of pigment thin enough so that colors show through one another and take on an extremely rich quality.”1971 Ledger review by Bobby Lowenberg.

Mauricio Lasansky Print

This Intaglio print was selected by Dr. Gene Egli to be given by the Iowa Arts Council to the FAA, in appreciation for Egli’s loan of a similar print featured in a “Governors Exhibit” in 1969. Mauricio Lasansky is the “Maestro of Printmaking”, born in Argentina in Oct. 12, 1914, and is internationally recognized as an outstanding printmaker in the world today. Lasansky has won hundreds of awards in the U.S. & around the world, and exhibits include National Gallery, Library of Congress, Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, Chicago Art Institute, and others around the world. He came to Iowa in 1945 to teach printmaking at the U of I, where he established the first printmaking master’s program, that became the model for colleges & universities. His art centers on family, his wife and six children. One print can take as long as two years to complete. In 1969 the FAA hosted an exhibit of Lasansky’s work on loan from the collection of Dr.& Mrs. Webster Gelman of Iowa City. It was said “We feel it is a real honor to have the exhibit in Fairfield. Many feel it will be the high point and biggest art show in Iowa this year – the Picasso of the print world”.