American, 1904 - 1999
Paul Cadmus entered the school of the National Academy of Design at fifteen with the encouragement of his parents, both of whom were artists. In 1928 he began working as an illustrator for a New York advertising agency and took life-drawing classes at the Art Students League. In 1931 and 1932 Cadmus and his studio-mate Jared French lived in a Mallorcan fishing village. On their return, Cadmus was employed on the first of the New Deal art programs and later painted several post office murals under government sponsorship. In conjunction with his first one-man exhibition in 1937, Cadmus published a credo (actually written by French) in which he declared himself a satirical propagandist for the correction of moral evils who used people's "subversive, selfish and deadening expressions" to convey humanity's "destructive malignity."
He is best remembered for his vivid, erotically charged figurative paintings that have often been classified as magical realism. Carousing café crowds, languid sunbathers, subway commuters, and gilded acrobats all populate his canvases, in forms and attitudes that suggest a range of influences from the great Renaissance masters to drugstore beefcake magazines. His most talked-about work continues to be his 1934 WPA commission The Fleet’s In!, which the U.S. Navy’s high brass decried as “a most disgraceful, sordid, disreputable, drunken brawl” and kept from public view for the next half-century.
Cadmus was a prolific draughtsman, but because he began working in the late 1930s primarily in the time-consuming technique of egg tempera, his output as a painter was relatively small.
He is best remembered for his vivid, erotically charged figurative paintings that have often been classified as magical realism. Carousing café crowds, languid sunbathers, subway commuters, and gilded acrobats all populate his canvases, in forms and attitudes that suggest a range of influences from the great Renaissance masters to drugstore beefcake magazines. His most talked-about work continues to be his 1934 WPA commission The Fleet’s In!, which the U.S. Navy’s high brass decried as “a most disgraceful, sordid, disreputable, drunken brawl” and kept from public view for the next half-century.
Cadmus was a prolific draughtsman, but because he began working in the late 1930s primarily in the time-consuming technique of egg tempera, his output as a painter was relatively small.
