Dwinell Grant | Biography | Hollis Taggart Galleries

Dwinell Grant (1912-1991)

Dwinell Grant began formal art training at Dayton Art Institute in 1931, but left for
New York in 1933 to study at the National Academy of Design. Through these years, Grant developed a non-objective style, guided by his belief that art should have fundamental integrity of its own rather than attempt to represent something else.

In 1935, Grant returned to Ohio to teach art and drama at Wittenberg College. He pursued his ideas about non-objective expression in avant-garde stage sets and lighting and grew interested in making experimental films. Encouraged by friends at the Dayton Art Institute, Grant wrote to Hilla Rebay at the Guggenheim Foundation requesting financial support. Impressed, she championed his work by sending him a stipend, arranged for the sale of several drawings, and included his paintings in a 1940 group show at the Museum of Non-objective Painting.

With Rebay’s support, Grant moved New York to work at the Guggenheim Foundation, but he never developed strong ties to other groups of abstract artists. Between 1938 and 1941, he made several short art films, which eventually led to a new focus for his career. During World War II, Grant made training films for the U.S. Navy. When the war ended he gained employment doing scientific illustration and making medical training films, and these professional activities left him little time for other creative endeavors. Grant exhibited only occasionally until his resurgence as a painter in the mid-1970s. He died in 1991.