The Student (L'Etudiante) / Gerome Kamrowski

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Record Details

Accession Number
1975/1.77
Title
The Student (L'Etudiante)
Artist Nationality
American
Artist Life Dates
1914 - 2004
Medium and Support
oil on canvas
Object Creation Date
1950
Object Creation Place
North and Central America (continent)
United States (nation)
Creation Place 2
United States (nation)
Style/Group/Movement
Surrealist
Inscription
Inscribed l.r.: KAMROWSKI
Dimensions
76.4 cm x 30.4 cm (30 1/16 in. x 11 15/16 in.)
Century
20th century
Primary Object Classification
Painting
Primary Object Type
abstract
Physical Description
On a narrow canvas a background of overlapping, rounded segments of blues, grays, and greens suggests rock. These layers build up to warmer colors, and on the surface of the layers are several shapes executed in white line suggestive of cave-painting. The shapes looks like microscopic organisms and are connected by the nerve-like white lines. As a whole, the visual elements are also suggestive of a seated figure, and the white shapes then appear as organs.
Subject Matter
Kamrowski's work creates a self-contained other-world of shapes and colors suggestive of microscopic life, terrestrial existence, and the cosmos. The execution also suggests primitive cave art, linking the work to a commentary on the roots of the human psyche. This piece can also be read as presenting the viewer a human form, perhaps the student of the title, whose body is composed of the lithic sections of cold colors and whose physical and psychical inner workings are represented in the white shapes that are connected by the nerve-like lines. The figure appears to be seated in a pose of meditation and the white shapes appear to occupy the shakra power centers described in Hinduism
Rights
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Technical Details

Image Size
585 x 1415
File Size
111 KB
Record
1975/1.77
Link to this Item
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/musart/x-1975-sl-1.77/1975_1.77.jpg

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Full citation
"The Student (L'Etudiante); Gerome Kamrowski." In the digital collection University of Michigan Museum of Art. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/musart/x-1975-sl-1.77/1975_1.77.jpg. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 19, 2024.
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