This sandbox is in the article namespace. Either move this page into your userspace, or remove the {{User sandbox}} template. Theodore Gilbert Haupt

Theodore Gilbert Haupt (1902-1990), an American Modernist painter, sculptor and muralist who later melded Cubist with Surrealist elements and briefly supported himself as a graphic designer, achieving wide recognition for his New Yorker magazine covers.

Theodore Haupt was one of three children born to Alexandria Dougon and an Episcopalian minister, Reverend Charles Edgar Haupt, in St. Paul Minnesota on October 2, 1902. Reverend Haupt’s father was General Herman Haupt, a West Point graduate appointed by Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, to supervise the Railroads and build bridges for the Union during the Civil War. He famously became an outspoken voice in President Lincoln’s White House during that troubled time^[1][2].

Early Life

Haupt’s early gifts for drawing and painting were noted but not encouraged by his family. Nonetheless, he persevered and was further inspired when, at age twenty-one, his paintings received highly favorable reviews in a large exhibition mounted by The Beard Gallery in Minneapolis. Haupt attended the Minneapolis School of Art, studying with Anthony Angarola (1893-1929), recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an acclaimed Chicago modernist^[3].

A critical turning point came for Haupt in 1923, when he won a scholarship to the Académie Julian, the progressive art school in Paris. There he was exposed to the school’s free-thinking discussions about the latest developments in art, joining an eclectic roster of talented students who had earlier made the school their training ground, among them John Singer Sargeant, Childe Hassan, Grant Wood and Marcel Duchamp. Haupt remained in Europe for two years, studying with the sculptor and painter, André L’Hote, who had exhibited at the Salon de la Section d’Or along with many of the founders of modern art and was, at the time Haupt studied with him, one of France’s most influential teachers and art critics.

As a Graphic Designer

In 1927 Haupt moved to New York, renting an apartment on East 10th Street in Manhattan. For five years Haupt supported his studio art with graphic design assignments for the New Yorker, Charm and Vanity Fair magazines; his debut New Yorker cover being produced almost immediately in September of that first year. Between 1927 and 1933, Haupt turned out a staggering forty-five covers for the New Yorker presenting a gamut of subjects from New York City at night, a view of Park Avenue (October 9, 1929 issue), now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, to art deco-style interpretations of annual events and social commentaries. Condé Nast maintains a large number of the artist’s forty-five original New Yorker magazine covers in its permanent collection.  

The 1930s

Haupt’s modernist paintings were being exhibited in New York art galleries and at museums around the country. Two of his paintings were selected for The Art Institute of Chicago’s 45th Annual Exhibition (October 24-December 8, 1935), Sea Beach (#91) and Shadow Lane (#92)^[4]. The art historian and author, Lloyd Goodrich, one of the exhibition’s three selection jurors would later become director of The Whitney Museum (1958-1968). Haupt’s works were shown at a number of museums, among them the Pennsylvania Academy of Art; The Minneapolis Institute of Art; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

During the 1930s Haupt continued turning out paintings and executing art for public spaces including work for the Whitney Museum and a mural for the Central Park Zoo (destroyed in a restoration of the zoo ). Along with many other artists during the depression, Haupt was active in the period’s government sponsored WPA Art Programs, an experience that encouraged an open-minded and experimental attitude in his art practice for the remainder of his life. Haupt recalled the sculptor Louise Nevelson’s lively “rent parties” which he attended with other WPA artists including Ivan Albright and Moses Soyer^[5].

A New Direction

In 1942, Haupt married a school teacher, Miriam Diehl. Her steady employment sustained the couple financially. Haupt and his wife purchased a house in Peekskill, New York in 1941 and in 1948 moved to San Migel de Allende, an artist’s community in Mexico. Haupt became increasingly engrossed in that country’s cultural contrasts, an interest that expressed itself in paintings and sculptures of this period. While in Mexico the couple built a house and adopted two children, Gloria and Maricella. After Miriam’s unfortunate early death, her pension continued to sustain the artist as the demand for illustration lessened

Now in a financial position to walk away from the machinations of the art market, Haupt embarked upon an extended period of renewed investigation and experimentation, working his way through abstract, color-drenched, non-representational painting styles and developing an important series of Surrealist-inspired canvases. A lifelong explorer, Haupt later investigated chromatic vibrations and dynamic optical effects in a series of compelling Op Art canvases. His career began as a realistic portrait painter and with the certainty of a homing pigeon, Haupt would return at every stage of his career to that subject matter, reinterpreting the process each time in light of his stylistic investigations.

Last Years

When his wife passed away in the 1960s, the artist moved to Hawaii with his children, later resettling in New York in the Westbeth Artist’s Community in Greenwich Village. Returning briefly to Hawaii in 1968, he connected with a lifelong supporter, Dan Wall, at the University of Hawaii. Theodore Haupt died at the age of 88, in Indianapolis, June 13, 1990.

Museum Collections:

Theodore Haupt’s works are in the permanent collections of:

• The Museum of the City of New York;
• The Museum of Modern Art;
• The former Finch College Museum;
• New York University;
• The University of Pennsylvania;
• The University of Massachusetts.

All images are courtesy of Sally Pleet