William Scharf 1927-2018

By Jesse Anderson

William Scharf, At the Fever Bend, 1965, Gouache on Paper, 27.9 x 34.9 cm.

Born on the 22nd of February, 1927, William Scharf grew up in Media, Pennsylvania. In his youth he enjoyed a friendship with American illustrator, Newell Convers Wyeth, who fuelled his artistic pursuits from the young age of 11. Travelling across Europe before eventually returning to America and settling in New York, Scharf’s paintings demonstrate his keen interest in the exploration of colour and self-expression whilst utilising a number of ambiguous symbols which oscillate throughout his oeuvre. Scharf primarily uses oil or gouache (a type of paint mixed with white pigment making it opaque) in his visually provocative paintings.

During the Second World War, Scharf served in the Army Air Corps, after which time he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where he worked under Franklin Watkins, Daniel Garber and Walter Stuempfig. However, in 1948 Scharf was given a scholarship to enrol in the Académie de la Grand Chaumière in Paris. This was a school which taught out-with the strict academic rules of other art schools of the time, thereby allowing Scharf to develop his artistic style with increased freedom which is evidenced in his experimental painting. In the time he spent studying in Paris, Scharf also travelled in Italy, Belgium and England. 

In the early 1950’s, Scharf moved back to Pennsylvania where he again studied at the Academy of Fine Arts until he made his final move to New York where he met and worked with artist Mark Rothko. Rothko and Scharf developed a close friendship; Scharf helped Rothko with his murals for the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. They maintained their relationship until Rothko’s tragic death in 1970. Rothko had a great influence on Scharf in his consideration of colour, Scharf was particularly interested in Rothko’s colour field paintings, the influence of which are prevalent in Scharf’s abstracted figuration.

With years of artistic study behind him, the 50’s and 60’s were a seminal period in which Scharf established himself as a late generation Abstract Expressionist. Throughout the 1950’s, Scharf was involved in a number of group exhibitions, receiving his first solo exhibition at the David Herbert Gallery in 1960. The 60’s were a prolific period for Scharf, who created At the Fever Bend in 1965, and A Majority of Sphinx in 1964, two of a vast collection of pieces which strongly define Scharf’s experimental style.

In his later years, alongside his continuing artistic contributions, William Scharf worked as a teacher for a number of institutions including the School of Visual Arts in New York, the San Francisco Art Institute and Stanford University. He was known as a caring teacher and mentor who was loved by students and colleagues alike. He retired in 2015, three years before his death in 2018, but he lives on through the number of museums in which his work still hangs. William Scharf’s paintings can be found in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, The Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC.

Bibliography

“William Scharf”. Hollis Taggart. Accessed February 20, 2023. https://www.hollistaggart.com/artists/43-william-scharf/

“William Scharf: Elemental Color, Works from the 50s and 60s”. GalleriesNow. Accessed February 20, 2023. https://www.galleriesnow.net/shows/william-scharf-elemental-color-works-from-the-50s-and-60s/

“William Scharf (1927-2018)”. ArtForum. January 31, 2018. https://www.artforum.com/news/william-scharf-1927-2018-74017