"Dancing Class, Saturday Evening Post Cover, 1952"   Lot no. 3117

Add to Want List


By Stevan Dohanos (American- 1907-1994)

1952
30.00" x 24.00", Framed 39.00" x 33.00"
Oil on Canvas
Signed Lower Left

REQUEST PRICE


PURCHASE REQUEST

Click any of the images above for additional views.



Original cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, May 10, 1952.

 

The Post described, “The two gentlemen pupils in our dance teachery are of opposite types, the grim foot-analyst and the carefree charge-about who lets feet fall where they may. The analyst will carefully shove his shoes around according to the dotted line around according to the dotted line on Stevan Dohanos’ chart, but when he comes to the end of the dotted line and is on his own, he will tend to go to pieces from fright. As he improves, he will have to be broken of the habit of peering down at his feet instead gazing into his partner’s eyes. Gradually the other man will be tamed down to a system of antics that any reasonably psychic woman can follow without catastrophe. And don’t worry about the lady pupil; that able young man will slowly but surely hitch wings to her clodhoppers.” 

 

(The Saturday Evening Post, May 10, 1952, p. 3)


Explore related art collections: $100,000 & Above / 1950s / Dance / Romance / Saturday Evening Post Covers

See all original artwork by Stevan Dohanos

ABOUT THE ARTIST

 

 Stevan Dohanos made his mark as a nationally famous cover artist for The Saturday Evening Post and chronicler of Americana, but he began at the bottom.

   He studied nights at the Cleveland School of Art long enough to get a job as an apprentice letterer, and gradually developed a solid studio background. A hard worker, he simultaneously painted and printed woodcuts for national exhibitions.

   In 1936, he painted an assignment for the Treasury Art Project in the Virgin Islands, and later, various mural commissions for federal buildings in Elkins, West Virginia; West Palm Beach, Florida; and Charlotte Amalie, Virgin Islands. His pictures are in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Avery Memorial of Hartford, and the New Britain Museum of American Art.

   His illustrations have appeared in almost all of the major magazines; he painted over 100 covers for The Saturday Evening Post. Twice a victim of tuberculosis himself, Dohanos contributed Christmas seal designs to the National Tuberculosis Association, and made many posters and designs for national and local charitable purposes. He designed well over forty stamps for the U.S. Postal Service, and for several years he served on the Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee for the Postmaster General and as its Design Coordinator.

    Dohanos was a member of the National Society of Mural Painters, the Artists and Writers club, the Dutch Treat Club. He served as President of the Society of Illustrators from 1961-63, was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 1971, and served as Honorary President from 1982 until his death.