Harold D. Landes (1898-1992)

Fine Arts Pioneer

Today, Kalamazoo has a healthy, vibrant arts community, with both individuals and organizations endeavoring to contribute to Kalamazoo’s rich cultural heritage. Yet, today’s arts landscape pales in comparison to that of the early part of the 20th century, when there was a social vacuum. Two of the significant pioneers in laying the groundwork for the establishment of an energetic arts community were Harold and Irene Landes, a married couple who were there at the beginning, and who would champion the arts throughout their lives.

Born in Kalamazoo on 28 May 1898 to David and Katherine Landes, Harold’s art education began when he studied at Guy H. Lockwood’s correspondence school while still a high school student. Lockwood, a longtime socialist, vegetarian, and poet, and politician, operated his art school on Parkview Avenue, across the street from Woods Lake in the early part of the 20th century. Harold was attracted to drawing cartoons as a young man, often exhibiting his works of daily teenager life in the high school hallways. Landes graduated from Kalamazoo Central High School in 1916, before apprenticing at Crescent Engraving Company for the next six years. It was during this time that he enlisted in the armed forces in October of 1918, just prior to the conclusion of the first world war. It was in the 1920s, a time period when a call to civic leaders to form an arts museum was proclaimed, that Landes and eight other painters established the Palette and Chisel Club. The group hired Robert Oliver, a faculty member of the Chicago Institute of Arts, as their instructor, and met at the Pythian Building (aka Park Building) and then later, at the Baldwin Sanitarium on Monroe Street. Along with another group of local artists, the Kalamazoo Chapter of the American Federation of the Arts, these two groups would form the nucleus of what would become the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (incorporated in 1924). The Palette and Chisel Club was disbanded in 1934, so as not to duplicate similar courses and programs being developed and promoted by the KIA.

However, the life of a painter of portraits and realist landscapes provided little opportunity for financial security, so along with his wife Irene, Landes launched a successful commercial art business called Midwest Studios (later changed to Landes Studios) around 1922. In addition to developing his own work, Landes volunteered as a KIA board member, and played a significant role in the organization of the inaugural Clothesline Art Show (now the Arts Fair) in 1952. It was during the Depression years that Landes and the KIA sought to highlight the works of some of the leading artists of the first half of the 20th century through their annual lecture program, namely Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo (1932), Thomas Hart Benton (1935), Le Corbusier (1936), Grant Wood (1937), and Frank Lloyd Wright (1938). 1989 saw Landes receive a Community Medal of Arts award, as well as a large-scale retrospective of his work at the KIA.

The Paintings

“From 1930 to 1989, Landes’ work has touched many of the key stations of 20th-century art: realism, impressionism, abstract expressionism, cubism, surrealism, even futurism. Somehow his personal sensibility has avoided being boxed in by any of these labels.”

—Kalamazoo Gazette, 30 March 1989

Landes’ long career allowed him to grow and evolve his artistic practices, absorbing along the way the varied influences of an eclectic assortment of 20th century schools and movements. As this evolution took place, both his subject matter and his compositional concerns changed along with the times. In the 1930s, his paintings were explorations of nature and place, sometimes prioritizing subject over color, while the birth of abstraction in the 1940s and 1950s allowed Landes to advance beyond representational images with a resurgence of color. Throughout his life, Landes also used his extensive travels in Europe, Asia, South America, and the Middle East as source material, rendering the places, people and local color he encountered. He claimed an affinity for harbor settings.

“I feel like (painting) is my way of expressing myself. I’m not an orator, I have ideas I like to express with color, and I don’t feel that I’ve ever done quite as good as I should. You just try to do something outstanding–for posterity.”

—Kalamazoo Gazette, 28 June 1981

Written by Ryan Gage, Kalamazoo Public Library staff, March 2024