Frank, Bena Virginia (1898-1991)

Born in Norfolk, VA, Frank spent her early years in Wyoming because her father had taken up sheep ranching. Perhaps hyperbolically, she recalled that “The sheep froze, and Indians raided the town. I remember seeing Indians over in the hills.” Her family moved to New York in 1913, where Frank studied at the Cooper Union, the Arts Students League, and privately with Stuart Davis. She was a founding member, in 1925, of the New York Society of Women Artists. In 1927 she married artist Ralph Mayer, a specialist in painting materials who published The Painter’s Craft. Her watercolor “Salt” appeared in a 1938 FAP exhibit on Long Island, focused upon farms and rural life; fellow NDG artists Louis Harris, Herman Copen, and Thomas Nagai also appeared. Signs a declaration published in NYT 26 June 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis?) on “the certainty of damage through testing and the imminence of catastrophe through miscalculation. We ask, in the name of our posterity, in the name of the unborn generations and of works yet unborn, that the current tests be stopped, never to be resumed” (1). The Brooklyn Museum (1930), 1 work at Index of American Design. 3 more images at FAP.


Works in the New Deal Collection at GVCA by Bena Frank:

Featured
Lilies and Crystal
Lilies and Crystal

A single lily stem displays two blossoms, with the promise of a third; their colors and shapes run extravagantly in all directions. Holding the lily is a crystal vase with a mesmerizing, flame-like pattern. Through its facets we see the lily’s green but also a range of colors drawn from the surrounding wall or atmospheric light.

Still Life in a Window
Still Life in a Window

This painting appears to be a collection of familiar domestic objects: a bowl of fruit and a plant rest upon a deep window sill; another plant is visible outdoors. But is everything in its place? Here, plants on either side of a glass window or glass serving dish point sharply in all directions. Fossil-fueled heat from a radiator is another material connection across the boundaries of inside and outside.

frankGVCA