Flora Crockett (1892–1979) was an American painter whose non-objective abstractions were said by New York Times critic, Roberta Smith, to be "elegant, knowing and at ease, made by a practiced hand." Known for dynamic compositions having layered design elements in exuberant color, she worked independently, without reference to the popular art movements of her time. She did not repeat herself so that, as one critic said, "everything feels discovered." Soon after her marriage in 1918, Crockett traveled to France with her sculptor husband Edmond Quattrocchi. There, she studied at Académie Moderne in Paris and in 1929 was appointed its director. In 1937, newly divorced, she returned from Paris. Three years later she rented an apartment on 14th Street at 8th Avenue in New York where she lived and painted the rest of her life. Throughout her career she supported herself by taking a variety of jobs, including work for the Federal Art Project and in war industries. In her free time both during her working years and after retirement, she produced a body of work which was recognized for its excellence after her death.
Early life and training
Crockett was born and raised on a family farm in northwest Ohio. Intending to become an art teacher, she studied art and mathematics at Oberlin College and, after graduating in 1911, studied art education at the Thomas Training School in Detroit, Michigan. In 1915 she was appointed art supervisor in the Roslyn, New York, public school system. While living in that community she met the Italian-born sculptor, Edmondo Quattrocchi. She and he continued to live there after marrying in 1918, and, in 1924, after he was hired to work on a memorial to the Second Battle of the Marne, they traveled to France. There, Crockett studied at the Sorbonne and the school of the Louvre, while also serving as head of a school for war orphans at Poissy, west of Paris.
Career
A few years later she attended and then became director of a Parisian art school that had been established by Fernand Léger. Called Académie Moderne, the school attracted students from as far away as Japan, South America, and the United States and had as instructors Amédée Ozenfant and Aleksandra Ekster as well as Léger. Crockett left the school in the early 1930s during a turbulent period when, no longer able to tolerate Quattrocchi's drinking and womanizing, she initiated divorce proceedings against him. In 1937, the year the divorce was finally granted in French court, she was given a solo exhibition at Galerie La Fenêtre Ouverte. She was also awarded a bronze medal for a painting she showed at the International Exposition in Paris that year.
At the end of 1937 Crockett returned to the United States. She lived in New York, where, mixing with the city's artists and art dealers, she met Blanche Bonestell. , the owner of a gallery on 57th Street, who took some paintings of hers on consignment. In 1938 she taught free art classes at the state normal school in Potsdam, New York as an employee of the Federal Art Project and the following year was given a solo show in Potsdam town library. In 1940 she returned to Manhattan where she rented an apartment at the corner of 14th Street and 8th Avenue where she lived and painted for the rest of her life.
With the entry of the United States in World War II, Crockett supported herself by working a succession of jobs in New York's war industries. Obtaining little income from her painting, she continued to work in engineering and design positions for New York employers until, at age 74, she was able to retire and devote her remaining years to producing art.
In 1946 Crockett was given a solo exhibition at the Bonestell Gallery and during the 1940s and 1950s her work appeared in group shows at both Bonestell and the Provincetown Art Association in Cape Cod. In 1942, as a member of the Bombshell Artists' Group, she showed three paintings in an exhibition held by the group at the Riverside Museum. In 1965, after she retired from the last of the jobs she had used to support herself, she contributed work to a show held at the Overseas Press Club in New York. From that time to 1973 she produced paintings that have been considered to be some of her finest work. Crockett died in 1979. In 2015 and again in 2017 she was given retrospective exhibitions by the Meredith Ward Fine Art gallery in Manhattan's Upper East Side.