Ben Messick: Horse in a Circus Tent

BEN MESSICK (1901-1981) was a well-listed California Modernist. HORSE IN A CIRCUS TENT, 7-1/2" x 11" sight size, (12" x !6" matted size). The medium is charcoal and the drawing is estate stamped in lower right. Benjamin Newton Messick, known as "the American Daumier", painted, drew, and lithographed Americana as he found it in his hometown of Los Angeles. With humor and compassion he recorded fragments of life as it was being lived in urban Southern California--robust and earthy subjects amidst, in his own words, "the streets, parks, Main Street Cafes, polo fields, and beaches". In the 1940's he was a sketch artist for Disney Studios and Metro-Goldwyn Mayer and he taught at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles from 1943 to 1951. From 1948 to 1953 he also taught classes at the San Diego School of Arts and Crafts. His work is widely exhibited and is included in such collections as that of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Laguna Art Museum, and the Springfield Museum of Art in Missouri. (He is a native of Missouri.) Source: Peter Falk, "Who Was Who in American Art"