Otis Oldfield

OTIS OLDFIELD (1890-1969) USA

“Water pipes and shadows” c. 1920

Oil on canvas, walnut frame

Signed: Otis Oldfield (lower left)

For more information see: Otis Oldfield 1890-1990, Centennial retrospective exhibition (San Francisco, CA: Inkwell Publishing, 1990).

Painting: H: 16 1/8” x W: 13”
Framed: H: 28 ¼” x W: 25 1/8”

Price: $42,500
***The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York owns a famous Gelatin silver print photograph by Morton Schamberg from 1916 entitled “God”. This image is akin to Duchamp’s “Fountain” and is an iconic Dadaist assemblage of plumbing pipes mounted on a miter box. The “Water Pipes and Shadows” painting by Otis Oldfield similarly brings a certain animation and personality to an under sink composition of mundane drain pipes in a sophisticated “Rayonist” or “Cubist” stylization. Otis Oldfield was born in Sacramento, California in 1890. He enrolled in the Best Art School in San Francisco in 1909 and continued his studies at the Academie Julian in Paris. Returning to the U.S., Oldfield settled briefly Sacramento before returning to San Francisco to accept a post as a teacher at the California School of Fine Art. Oldfield developed a bold modernist style, which caused some controversy among critics covering his exhibits. In 1936 Oldfield was one of a group of San Francisco artists chosen for a WPA project to paint murals in San Francisco’s Coit Tower. Following WW II, Oldfield taught at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. He died in San Francisco in 1969.