Club Julio A. Mella (Cuban Workers' Club)
Artist
Henry Glintenkamp
(American, 1887 - 1946)
CultureAmerican
Date1937
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions26 1/4 × 32 1/4 in. (66.7 × 81.9 cm)
Overall, Frame: 35 3/4 × 41 3/4 × 2 3/8 in. (90.8 × 106 × 6 cm)
Overall, Frame: 35 3/4 × 41 3/4 × 2 3/8 in. (90.8 × 106 × 6 cm)
InscribedSigned lower left: Glintenkamp;
Inscribed on the verso:;
Club Julio A. Mella;
(Cuban Workers' Club);
Glintenkamp;
[symbol] 1937
Credit LineGift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
Object number71.2248
Not on view
DescriptionThis is an oil on canvas painting of a busy restaurant scene. In the foreground, on the left, there is a man's back - he is wearing a gray overcoat and hat. He is conversing with two others: a woman in a brown overcoat and hat with a feather, and a man with a mustache. They sit at a rectangular table with a white tablecloth. The man with the mustache is gazing down or out at the viewer; his eyes are shaded. People are talking, eating, and smoking. There are posters hanging on the walls in the background; a newspaper kiosk is in the upper left corner.Label TextHenry Glintenkamp American, 1887–1946 Club Julio A. Mella (Cuban Workers' Club), 1937 Oil on canvas All of the food in Henry Glintenkamp’s Club Julio A. Mella is served up with a heavy dose of politics. Posters on the back wall reference Mexican elections and the Spanish Civil War—causes of particular interest to the members of this Communist club. The crowd is a diverse mix of races, genders, and professions, from workers to intellectuals, reflecting the artist’s vision of an ideal society. Like his teacher Robert Henri and other painters in the earlier Ashcan School tradition, Glintenkamp chose a coarse and expressive style for his scenes of working-class New York life. Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.2248 ProvenanceIrvin Brenner, New York, 1971; Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.; Chrysler Art Museum of Provincetown, Mass.; Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. to The Chrysler Museum, 1971. Exhibition History"American Artists' Congress," Annual New York Members Exhibition, Mezzanine Gallery of the International Building at Rockefeller Center, New York, April 1937. "Three Hundred Years of American Art in the Chrysler Museum," Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, Va., March 1 - July 4, 1976. "Social Concern and Urban Realism: American Painting of the 1930s," District 1199, New York, N.Y., April 7 - May 14, 1983; Boston University Art Gallery, Boston, Mass., October 13 - November 10, 1983; Anchorage Historical and Fine Arts Museum, Anchorage, Alaska, December 10, 1983 - January 21, 1984; Lauren Rogers Library and Museum of Art, Laurel, Miss., February 18 - March 31, 1984; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, April 28 - June 9, 1984; Norton Gallery and School of Art, West Palm Beach, Fla., July 7 - August 18, 1984; The Fine Arts Museum of the South at Mobile, Mobile, Ala., September 15 - October 27, 1984. (Exh. cat. no. 11) "The Allegorical Table," The Peninsula Fine Arts Center, Newport News, Va., November 20, 1993 - January 9, 1994; William King Regional Art Center, Abingdon, Va., February 19 - April 10, 1994. "Nueva York: 1613-1945," El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY, September 17, 2010 - January 9, 2011. "American Treasures at the Willoughby-Baylor House," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, January 2 - December 1, 2013. "American Appetite: Selections from the Chrysler Museum of Art," Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA, February 6 - June 6, 2021. “The New York Century: 100 Years of Imagining New York, 1923-2023,” Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY, May 20, 2023 – September 8, 2024. Published ReferencesDennis R. Anderson, _Three Hundred Years of American Art in the Chrysler Museum_, exh. cat., Norfolk, Va., 1975, 192. Patricia Hills, with an essay by Raphael Soyer, _Social Concern and Urban Realism: American Painting of the 1930s_, exh. cat., Boston University Art Gallery, Boston, Mass., 1983, 45, no. 11. ISBN: 0872700526 Linda Weintraub, ed., _Art What Thou Eat: Images of Food in American Art_, exh. cat., Edith C. Blum Art Institute, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., 1991, 151-152. ISBN: 1559210516 Andrew Hemingway, _Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926-1956_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 125-127, fig. 90. ISBN: 0300092202 Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 192-193, no. 121. ISBN: 0-940744-71-6 Ariel Mae Lambe, _No Barrier Can Contain It: Cuban Antifascism and the Spanish Civil War_, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019) cover image.
