Charmion von Wiegand

Charmion Von Wiegand
Born	1896 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	1983 New York, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Known for	Painter, Journalist, Art critic
Movement	Neo-Plasticism

Charmion von Wiegand (1896–1983) was an American journalist, abstract painter, writer, collector, benefactor and art critic. She was the daughter of Inez Royce, an artist, and Karl Henry von Wiegand. Karl Henry von Wiegand was the German-born journalist known for wartime reporting.

Von Wiegand was born in Chicago in 1900, grew up in Arizona and California, attended a public school in San Francisco (where she initially became interested of Chinese culture in visiting chinatown), and lived for three years in Berlin as a teenager. Then she attended Barnard College for a year and then transferred to Columbia University School of Journalism where she studied Journalism, the she transferred to the Department of Art and Archeology. Later, she studied at New York University in New York City with Richard Offner. In college, she explored Theater, Archaeology, Greek, Philosophy and Art History nevertheless, she did not complete her bachelor's degree and thought she might become a playwright. Soon after college, Von Wiegand married and moved to Darien, Connecticut. The marriage ended shortly with a divorce after her husband moved to Germany. She started to paint in 1926 while receiving psychoanalytic therapy and encouragement from her friend and painter, Joseph Stella.

She stayed in Moscow, Russia from 1929- 1932. There, she became a correspondent for the Universal Service of the Hearst Press where her father had been an editor. In Moscow, Charmion von Wiegand saw the Fauve paintings in the Morosof Collection, inspiring her imagination and desire to paint seriously.

When she returned to New York in 1932, she began painting landscapes. In 1931-1934, Von Wiegand became the second wife to the communist activist and co-founder of the journal New Masses Joseph Freeman, to whom she remained married until his death, although both partners' fidelity were in question. She wrote a sequence of fourteen art criticism reviews for New Masses, became editor for "Art Front, the magazine of the Artist's Union, and several other publications including Federal Art Project (FAP), New Theatre, ARTnews, and Arts Magazine. Von Wiegand herself believed she should not involve herself in too much in politics due to her art, but she critiques often implied a leaning towards Marxism as she claimed the best art was made from the rising class. Her exception was Pablo Picasso, whose works of art she admired yet believed to be confused in ideologies, regressive and lacked humanism.

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