John Millard Ferren (October 17, 1905 – July 1, 1970) was an American artist and educator. He was active from 1920 until 1970 in San Francisco, Paris and New York City.
Early life
John Ferren was born in Pendleton, Oregon on October 17, 1905, on the Blackfoot Indian Reservation. His parents were Verna Zay (née Westfall) and James William Ferren, his father served in the Army and the family moved often. In 1911, the family settled down in San Francisco, California.
In 1925, he briefly attended the California School of Fine Arts (now known as San Francisco Art Institute). In his 20s, he apprenticed as a stonecutter in San Francisco and producing portrait busts.
Career
Paris
In 1929, he traveled to New York City and Paris. While in Paris, Ferren attended classes at the Sorbonne, Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and Académie Ranson. Although for the most part not formally educated, preferring to develop his art through an adventurous life style, and interaction with other artists, he was known as an intellectual among his peers. He wrote many published articles on abstract art and art theory. His writing and artwork appears in three issues of the influential magazine; It is. A Magazine for Abstract Art (1958-1965). While in Paris, Ferren was part of the community of artists working in Europe in the 1920s and 30s, including Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Hans Hofmann, Joaquín Torres-García, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, and Pablo Picasso. He became friendly with Picasso, who mentored him, and together they stretched the canvas for Picasso's large 1937 painting Guernica.
He briefly returned to the United States in 1930, returning to Paris soon after, where he remained until 1938. He was liked to the group Abstraction-Création. He was the only artist who was both an inner-circle member of the Parisian avant garde of the 1930s, and the New York School abstract expressionists of the 1940s and 1950s. Gertrude Stein, remarked of Ferren in her 1937 book Everybody's Autobiography: "He is the only American painter foreign painters in Paris consider a painter and whose painting interests them.
He worked at Atelier 17 with Stanley William Hayter, and learned about a nineteenth-century printing technique, the engraving plate is imprinted in wet plaster, and when dried, is then carved and painted.
New York
In 1938, he moved to New York City. He was a founding member (and later president) of The Club, a group of artists who were at the heart of the emerging New York School of abstract expressionism. He befriended Yun Gee, and through Gee, he became interested Taoism and Zen Buddhism.
He taught at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, starting in 1946. Additionally he taught at Cooper Union (1946), Queens College (1952–1970), ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, California, and the University of California, Los Angeles. During this time, he lived in a home and summer studio he designed and built in Brentwood, California.
In the 1950s, Ferren collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock. In the 1955 film The Trouble With Harry, the artworks of main character Sam Marlowe were painted by Ferren. In the 1958 film Vertigo, Ferren created the Jimmy Stewart nightmare sequence as well as the haunting, Portrait of Carlotta.
Beirut
Ferren was selected as the first US State Department's Artist in Residence, and spent one year ('63–'64) residing in Beirut, Lebanon with his family. They lived on the second floor of the famous Beirut landmark building The Pink House (sometimes Rose House) which also served as his studio. While lin the middle east he had several exhibitions, including at the American University of Beirut, and travel throughout the region giving lectures on his work, and American Abstract Expressionism. His presence there was captured in an art project by painter Tom Young, in 2014–2015.