Caroline Durieux

Durieux was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 22, 1896.[1] She began drawing at the age of four and received art lessons from Mary Butler, a member of the Newcomb College's Art faculty. She worked in watercolor from the age of six and in 1908 created a portfolio of watercolors depicting New Orleans scenery. Most of these early works are in The Historic New Orleans Collection. She continued at Newcomb College of Tulane University in the Art School headed by Ellsworth Woodward. From her college days she was interested in satire and the use of humor in her imagery. Durieux earned a Bachelor's in Design in 1916 and a Bachelor's in Art Education in 1917, and she pursued graduate studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art led by Henry McCarter (1864 – 1942). She returned to Louisiana after graduate school and married Pierre Durieux (1889 - 1949) in April, 1920. Pierre worked in his family's business importing laces and dress goods from many Latin American countries.

Pierre's work led to a job in Cuba which Caroline described as a time of "quiet artistic growth that heightened her sense of color." Caroline Durieux lived in the French Quarter in the mid-1920s, and was part of a circle of talented and creative individuals featured in a private publication, "Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles." Her next-door neighbors included author, William Faulkner, and silver designer, William Spratling.

In 1926, Pierre was named chief representative of General Motors for all of Latin America, but Caroline stayed and worked in Mexico City. She received a letter of introduction to Diego Rivera from Tulane anthropologist, Franz Blom, which helped ease her transition into the local artist community. In 1929, Rene d'Harnoncourt (1901-1968), an important figure in the art world and later director of New York's Museum of Modern Art, organized a solo exhibition of Caroline's oil paintings and drawings at the Sonora News Company. Rivera wrote a favorable review of his friend's exhibition, and then chose the occasion to paint her portrait.

Again, a promotion for Pierre marked an important development in his wife's career. This time they moved to New York, where Caroline forged a lifelong friendship with Carl Zigrosser (1891-1975). Zigrosser championed Durieux's career, first as director of the prestigious Weyhe Gallery, then as the curator of prints at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and including her in his many books. It was Zigrosser who recognized Durieux's talent and eye for satire and encouraged her adoption of lithography as a primary means of artistic expression.

In 1931, the Durieuxs again were transferred to Mexico City. Eager to learn more about lithography, Durieux enrolled in the Academy of San Carlos (now the National University of Mexico) to study with Emilio Amero (1901-1976).

In 1934, Durieux experimented with etching, a technique she learned from Howard Cook (1901-1980). Caroline wrote to Carl Zigrosser: "All my etchings are harrowing. I think it is because the medium is such a precarious one-the least slip and all is lost. I can't be funny on a copper plate. I feel tragic the moment I think of doing an etching."

In 1937, Pierre Durieux was diagnosed with severe cardiac disease. His doctors ordered him to return to the United States, so the couple left Mexico reluctantly and returned to New Orleans. Later that year, Durieux was hired to teach in Newcomb College's art department for the fall term, where she placed particular importance on ensuring that her students could draw before advancing to other classes.

Durieux took on a second job as director of the Federal Art Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration in February, 1939. In a state where racial segregation remained legal until the 1960s, Caroline's Louisiana division of the FAP was the only project not to practice discrimination. Caroline always expressed great pride in that accomplishment: "I had a feeling that an artist is an artist and it doesn't make any difference what color he or she is." Robert Armstrong Andrews, associate director of the national office, praised Durieux's work: "It is my observation that the people in Louisiana have more concern with the potentialities of the Negro and less for his limitations than the people of any other state.” [2] From 1943 to 1964, she taught in the art department at Louisiana State University.[3]

She developed the technique of cliché verre, printmaking on glass, and electron printmaking (with radioactive ink).[4]

Durieux died on November 26, 1989 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.[5] In 2018 she was profiled in a short film on New Orleans public TV, WYES, as part of the station's "Tricentennial Moments" campaign honoring the city (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMFJrgxDpmc).

Her papers are held at Louisiana State University [6] and the Archives of American Art.[7] In 2010, a retrospective, "Caroline Durieux: A Radioactive Wit", was exhibited at the LSU Museum of Art.[8]

• Carl Zigrosser, The artist in America: twenty-four close-ups of contemporary printmakers, A.A. Knopf, 1942
• Richard Cox, Caroline Durieux: Lithographs of the Thirties and Forties, Louisiana State University Press, 1977
• From society to socialism: the art of Caroline Durieux, Newcomb Art Gallery, 2008, ISBN 978-0-9668595-6-0

"Newcomb College, 1886-2006, Higher Education for Women in New Orleans" edited by Susan Tucker and Beth Willinger, Chapter 16

• http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2008/10/caroline-durieux.html
• http://www.artnet.com/artists/caroline-durieux/past-auction-results
• https://web.archive.org/web/20110927072935/http://www.gilleysgallery.com/PAGES/BIO_PAGES/DURIEUX.html
• Caroline Wogan Durieux Collection at the LSU Museum of Art, Louisiana Digital Library, Baton Rouge, La. (accessed 26 January 2015) <http://www.louisianadigitallibrary.org/cdm/search/collection/CWD>
• Caroline Durieux, Tricentennial Moment
• self portrait, 1942