Lee Gatch

Who was Lee Gatch?

Lee Gatch, was a twentieth-century American artist known for his lyrical abstractions and his ability to find "a fresh approach" to painting the figure and nature "through interwoven patterns of flattened figures" and a Fauvist-inspired sense of landscape.

Gatch was born in a rural community near Baltimore. His family had no sympathy with his artistic aspirations, which was a source of pain throughout his life, but he was determined to make a name for himself as an artist. He graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in the early 1920s; there a visiting instructor, New York painter John Sloan, made a strong impression on him and confirmed him in his sense of his vocation.

In 1924, in search of more advanced instruction and more exposure to modern art, he went to Europe and studied with the painter Andre Lhote. While in Paris, he was a particularly avid student of the French modernism of André Derain, Édouard Vuillard, and Pierre Bonnard, inspirations which are evident in his own refined color sense. According to the online biography of Gatch at the Phillips Collection website, Gatch exhibited in the Venice Biennials of 1950 and 1956, and he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1957. Although he is best known for his nature-inspired abstract works, he also worked for a time as a muralist for the WPA. He was married in 1936 to Precisionist artist Elsie Driggs. They had one child, Merriman Gatch.