ART | Upstate co-op farm (1951-1961)
Upstate co-op farm (1951-1961)
Charles Keller and his family spent the 1950s on a cooperative farm outside of Newburgh, in Roseton, NY. There he built an art studio where he continued his observational style of drawing and painting, focusing mostly on rural subjects. During this time, we see images of farmworkers, political gatherings, portraits and scenes from everyday life. He began a series of drawings featuring the Newburgh Ferry, which would later become a well-known serigraph, Newburgh Ferry Slip. The Newburgh Historical Society and The Crisp Museum hold collections of work from this period.
Apart from the farm, a side trip to Cape Cod resulted in his oil painting Off the Cape, 1955 and in 1956 Keller took an interest in Matthew Henson's often overlooked role in the Robert Peary 1909 expedition to the North Pole, and painted Dash to the Pole, now owned by the Schomburg Center.
Keller's social realist sensibilities are still prevalent throughout the 1950s but he begins experimenting with color and line while retaining the underlying structure of the work. The Peacemakers, 1954, is a preview of this shifting style which fully develops with his move to Italy.