James A. Bridenstine Executive Director

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2 The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts is privileged to bring to public attention the work of Catherine Hinkle, a talented Chicago artist with strong ties to Michigan and to Kalamazoo. Although her career and life were all too brief, she was an artist with an exceptional sense of color and design and a confident aesthetic vision. We are grateful to several individuals who played important roles in bringing this exhibition to fruition. Our friend James Kahllo of Plainwell Antiques first brought the work of Catherine Hinkle to our attention and urged us to produce an exhibition. The artist s sister, the late Marilyn Hinkle, treasured Catherine s work. She maintained a strong collection of both paintings and prints, and saved valuable news clippings and notices of exhibitions. She also wrote a sensitive biography of her sister our exhibition title was drawn from that manuscript. Since Marilyn s death in 2007, her friend Tish Loveless has maintained the collection and archival materials. Through her generous support, this exhibition and publication will be a lasting record of the bright moment in art that was illuminated by the work of Catherine Hinkle. James A. Bridenstine Executive Director 2 Cover: Catherine Hinkle, Red, Pink, Blue, Green, n.d.

3 Scintillation, 1949, oil on canvas, 28¼ x 28¼ Spring, 1950, oil on canvas, 24 x 24¼ 3

4 Catherine Hinkle ( ) was a gifted painter, printmaker, and book designer whose work deserves to be better known. In the late 1940s and through the 50s, her development as an artist was on an upward trajectory she studied art under the Bauhaus proponent László Moholy-Nagy, established a career as a book designer, and received recognition as a promising emerging painter in regional exhibitions and national publications. But her career was cut short when she passed away shortly after her 48th birthday. Fortunately, her work has been preserved in private collections, where it is appreciated on a daily basis. Born in St. Joseph, Michigan, Hinkle grew up in a warm and close family environment. Her father was a mechanical engineer; her mother a homemaker. Her older sister Marilyn ( ), who attended Kalamazoo College and the University of Michigan, worked at Kalamazoo College for 31 years in various capacities, including the director of public relations and alumni director. 1 4 Catherine Hinkle, Violet on Gold, 1953

5 Reflections, 1950, oil on canvas, 14 x 14 Interlude, 1951, oil on canvas, 28 x 28 5

6 Catherine developed an early interest in art. Upon graduating from high school, she made an agreement with her parents that she would first go to a liberal arts college and if, after two years, she still wanted to go to art school, she could do so. Like her sister, she went to Kalamazoo College. But after two years, and upon the recommendation of one of her instructors, she enrolled in the program at the Institute of Design, Chicago. The Institute of Design had been founded in 1937 as the New Bauhaus by László Moholy-Nagy, who was a principal instructor at the Bauhaus in Germany ( ). The original Bauhaus was an influential school of art, design, and architecture based on the belief that industry and all of the arts craft, fine arts, architecture, typography and graphic design, and industrial design should be integrated in our lives. Pressures from the Nazi regime resulted in the school s closure and many of its founders and instructors (Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Moholy-Nagy, and others) emigrated to the U.S., where they taught at various schools and influenced the development of modernism in this country. Hinkle studied at the Institute of Design for four years, receiving her B.A. in Visual Design in Under the guidance of eminent instructors like László Moholy-Nagy, Alexander Archipenko, Emerson Woelffer, and Richard Koppe, Hinkle absorbed the tenets of modernism. She was a promising student. 2 When members of her family visited her in Chicago, Moholy-Nagy told them, She is my little color genius. Shortly after graduating, Hinkle began to exhibit her work in both regional and national exhibitions. Her first solo exhibition, at the Well of the Sea Gallery in the old Sherman Hotel, was reviewed favorably in the Chicago Tribune. The exhibition undoubtedly featured some of the paintings in the current exhibition richly colored, multilayered canvases in a square format, with wide white frames that were constructed by her father. Although produced at the same time that Abstract Expressionism was emerging in New York, her abstract paintings exhibit an ordered, architectural structure that reveals her training in a post-bauhaus Chicago institution. While on first impression they appear non-objective, she often chose titles and colors that referenced intangible aspects of life. Hinkle wrote about her work: My paintings are not an attempt to capture or re-make visual reality, but rather, they are color experiences or interpretations of abstract qualities through color. The key to understanding my work is not to see what is painted, but rather to feel it. 6

7 Untitled, n.d., oil on canvas, 28 x 28 Deep Myriad, , oil on canvas, 28 x 28 7

8 Hinkle s work continued to receive recognition in increasingly prominent venues. In the early 1950s, her work was included in three of the Momentum exhibitions in Chicago. The illustrious jurors for the 1953 Momentum, which included works by artists from 18 mid-continental states, were Adolph Gottlieb, Richard Lippold, and Ad Reinhardt. Of the 165 works selected independently by the three jurors, Catherine Hinkle was one of only four artists whose work was selected by all three of the jurors. In 1956, Hinkle was nominated as New Talent in the USA in the February issue of Art in America. Hinkle began a career as a book designer, balancing her work as a fine artist with her work as a graphic designer. From 1951 to 1968, she worked as an assistant art director for the Chicago publishing firm, Scott, Foresman Company. She married in Her husband, the artist Richard Koppe ( ), had been one of Hinkle s teachers at the Institute of Design. Once they married, Catherine continued her work as a book designer, but she focused less on her own art, as she devoted more of her time to facilitating the artistic career of her husband. In March of 1973 Hinkle had returned briefly to Michigan to visit her family. While home, she received word that her husband (10 years her senior, but still a relatively young man) had suffered a heart attack and died. Shortly after Koppe s death, Hinkle moved to Kalamazoo, where her parents and her sister were living. She moved into an apartment and busied herself cataloguing her husband s work in preparation for giving it to the University of Illinois, where Koppe had been teaching. Her own health declined quickly. Within a year of her husband s death, she herself died of a heart attack. In 1979, a retrospective exhibition of Catherine Hinkle s work was mounted at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where the Koppe and Hinkle archives are maintained. In the brochure for that exhibition, Eugene Dana noted that, had Hinkle continued painting, we might now be recognizing a major American artist. 3 With this current exhibition, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts is pleased to further recognize the work of Catherine Hinkle, a modern artist of great promise. Vicki C. Wright Director of Collections and Exhibitions 1 This essay relies heavily on the archival materials collected by the artist s sister, the late Marilyn Hinkle. Marilyn s unpublished biographical tribute to her sister, A Precious Artistic Moment, was written in Two of Hinkle s student works are reproduced in Hans Wingler s The Bauhaus (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT Press, 1969), pp. 591, Eugene Dana, in The Chrysalis, from Student to Artist, exhibition brochure (Chicago: University of Illinois, 1979). 8

9 Untitled, n.d., oil on board, 28 x 28 R+Blues (or Reds and Blues), n.d., oil on canvas, 12 x 12, Lent by Melissa Smiley and Patricia Wren 9

10 Untitled, 1959, oil on canvas, 36 x Altitude, before 1972, oil on canvas, 36 x 36

11 László Moholy-Nagy, Hungarian ( ) Untitled, ca. 1923, mixed media collage, 18¼ x 12½ Richard Koppe, American ( ) Untitled, 1949, oil on canvas, 32 x 43 Catherine Hinkle, American ( ) Scintillation, 1949, oil on canvas, 28 ¼ x 28¼ Dimensions (unframed) are given in inches, height preceding width. Unless otherwise noted, works are from the collection of the late Marilyn Hinkle. Works photographed by Brian Mosher. Spring, 1950, oil on canvas, 24 x 24¼ Reflections, 1950, oil on canvas, 14 x 14 Interlude, 1951, oil on canvas, 28 x 28 Untitled, n.d., oil on canvas, 28 x 28 Deep Myriad, , oil on canvas, 28 x 28 Red, Pink, Blue, Green, n.d., oil on canvas, 10 x 10 Violet on Gold, 1953, oil and gold leaf on canvas, 10 x 10 Untitled, n.d., oil on board, 28 x 28 R+Blues (or Reds and Blues), n.d., oil on canvas, 12 x 12, Lent by Melissa Smiley and Patricia Wren Untitled, 1959, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 Altitude, before 1972, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 Richard Koppe, American ( ) Untitled, 1949, oil on canvas, 32 x 43 László Moholy-Nagy, Hungarian ( ) Untitled, ca. 1923, mixed media collage, 18¼ x 12½ 11

12 1926 Born St. Joseph, Michigan, January Studied at Kalamazoo College Studied at the Institute of Design, Chicago, Illinois, with instructors László Moholy-Nagy, Alexander Archipenko, Emerson Woelffer, and Richard Koppe B.A. degree in Visual Design, Institute of Design, Chicago, Illinois 1950 Hinkle s work was reproduced in the September issue of La Revue Moderne, Paris Exhibited work in national exhibitions: 4th and 5th National Print Annual Exhibitions, Brooklyn Museum (1950 and 51) 22nd and 23rd Annual Northwestern Printmakers Exhibitions, Seattle Art Museum (1950 and 51) Well of the Sea Gallery, Chicago, solo exhibitions (1950 and 51) Momentum Exhibitions, Chicago (1950, 52, and 53) 12th and 13th National Serigraph Society Annual Exhibitions, New York (1951 and 52) Annual Exhibition of Artists of Chicago and Vicinity, Art Institute of Chicago (1952, 55-57) Assistant Art Director, Scott, Foresman Company, Chicago 1953 and 54 Received top honors for book design in the 4th and 5th Annual Midwestern Bookmaking Exhibitions, Chicago 1955 Married Richard Koppe 1956 Nominated as New Talent in the USA in February issue of Art in America 1973 Moved to Kalamazoo after the death of her husband 1974 Suffered a coronary arrest and died in Kalamazoo 1979 Retrospective exhibition, The Chrysalis, from Student to Artist, University of Illinois, Chicago