Ivan (Le Lorraine) Albright

Painter, born in Harvey, Illinois, USA. He turned to painting after World War 1, in which he served as a medical draughtsman in France. The clinical studies he made then of surgical operations laid the foundations of the meticulous technique he perfected later, as well as promoting an obsession with morbid subject matter. His style has been called ‘Magic Realism’, and had links with Surrealism, but he remained one of the most idiosyncratic of 20th-c painters.

Ivan Le Lorraine Albright (February 20, 1897 – November 18, 1983) was a magic realist painter and artist, most renowned for his self-portraits, character studies, and still lifes.

Ivan Albright and his identical twin Malvin were born near Chicago in North Harvey, Illinois, to Adam Emory Albright and Clara Wilson Albright. Both enrolled in The Art Institute of Chicago, a coin-flip deciding that Ivan would study painting and Malvin sculpture.

Albright attended Northwestern University, but dropped out and took up studies in architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After working in architecture and advertising briefly he was pushed away by commercialism and took seriously to painting.

Among Albright's typically dark, mysterious works are some of the most meticulously executed paintings ever made, often requiring years to complete. An early painting of his, The Lineman won an award and made the cover of Electric Light and Power, a trade magazine. The editors later distanced themselves from Albright's work.

Albright focused on a few themes through most of his works, particularly death, life, the material and the spirit, and the effects of time. He painted very complex works, and their titles matched their complexity. He would not name a painting until it was complete, at which time he would come up with several possibilities, more poetic than descriptive, before deciding on one. Such an example is Poor Room - There is No Time, No End, No Today, No Yesterday, No Tomorrow, Only the Forever, and Forever and Forever Without End (The Window), the last two words actually describing the painting (it was as such the painting is generally referred). Another painting, And Man Created God in His Own Image, was called God Created Man in His Own Image when it toured the South. One of his most famous paintings, which took him some ten years to complete, was titled That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do (The Door), which won top prize at three major exhibitions in New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia in 1941. The prize at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York earned him a $3,500 purchase award and a place in the permanent collection, but, not willing to part with the work for less than $125,000, Albright took the First medal instead, allowing him to keep the painting.

In 1943 he was commissioned to create the title painting for Albert Lewin's film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. His brother was chosen to do the original uncorrupted painting of Gray, but another artist's was used in the film.

Albright was a prolific artist throughout his life, working as a printer and engraver as well as a painter. He made his own paints and charcoal, and carved his own elaborate frames. He was obsessive about lighting to the point that he painted his studio black, and wore black clothing to cut out potential glare.