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The Philip C. Curtis Charitable Trust
for the Encouragement of Art
Trustees: Janie Ellis & Philip J. Curtis
Mr. Curtis created the Philip C. Curtis Charitable Trust for the Encouragement of Art. His intention was to encourage artists of all ages and support the arts in general, and continue to share his artwork with a new and broader audience beyond his lifetime. A major goal of The Curtis Charitable Trust is to maintain the substantial collection of paintings Mr. Curtis left the Trust, and more significantly, to enhance it into a strong, retrospective collection that can travel and show in major museums, universities, and other institution around the world.
Help the Trust
You can help the Trust accomplish Philip C. Curtis's wishes in various ways:
If you personally anticipate, or know of anyone who may consider the potential gift, loan, or sale of a Curtis painting, the Trust would like to know about it. We seek to expand our permaent collection for histortical significance, scholarly research, and exhibition. We are also developing our provenance database.
Contributions to our 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization are tax-deductible.
We encourage you to share in our enthusiasm to promote the legacy of one of Arizona's greatest artists. We look forward to the future as the Curtis Trust develops and shares Mr. Curtis's endowment for the arts.
Contact the Trust
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About the Artist
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Home
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Charitable Trust
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About the Artist
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About the Artist
Philip Campbell Curtis was born on May 26th, 1907 in Jackson, Michigan. He received a B.A. from Albion College and enrolled in the art program at Yale in 1932. He moved to New York in 1935 and worked as Supervisor with the Federal Art Project, Works Progress Administration (WPA) under Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. As WPA Supervisor, he established the Phoenix Art Center in 1937, which later became the Phoenix Art Museum.
"Philip C. Curtis is a unique artist, and American original whose life and work have spanned and absorbed the art history of virtually the entire twentieth century. His charming, exquisitely crafted paintings, in unique frames selected and integrated by the artist, present an imagined vision of Americana influenced by the magic world of the circus and entertainment and by the artists memories of his turn-of-the-century childhood in Michigan. They combine people (often in period costumes) and musical instruments with invented, isolated, boundless settings in intense colors and in moods that echo surrealism, magic realism, and realism. The figures in Curtis's paintings are In effect characters in a plat staged by the artist: I treat the canvas as a stage and the people I use belong to an acting company of mine...Philip C. Curtis's provocative paintings, like those of Rene Magritte, stimulate and enchant our minds as well as out eyes, delighting us with their brain-teasing takes on the nature of art and the foibles of living. The loneliness they sometimes portray is softened by the artists evident fascination with rituals and activities summoned up by his memories of the past." (from American Dreamer: The Art of Philip C. Curtis)
Articles
Philip C. Curtis: Watercolors
"Philip C. Curtis is one of the best-known of Arizona's modern artists. His surrealist images of circuses and fantasy landscapes, populated by a cast of characters from days gone by, are beloved by local audiences. Yet Curtis had another, little-known side as an artist. At periods throughout his career, he made casual watercolors that are the antithesis of his paintings -- loose, gestural, and full of exuberance...
(click to read more)
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Surrealism Revisited
"...In Philip C. Curtis' oil paintings, the men are still wearing bowlers, stiff collars and even goatees, but the world is historical only in the sense of art history. Curtis' is a universe of layers, reflections and inversions...
(click to read more)
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Understated Original
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He preferred to give the mind plenty of room to roam through his portraits and landscapes. As an incentive, he often threw open the doors and windows of the houses in his paintings, or made paintings within paintings, opening like virtual windows on experiences within the experience...(click to read more)"
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