Archives of American Art

A Finding Aid to the De Hirsh Margules Papers, 1888-2001, bulk 1923-1965, in the Archives of American Art

Summary

Collection ID:
AAA.margde
Creators:
Margules, De Hirsh, 1899-1965
Dates:
1888-2001
bulk 1923-1965
Languages:
English
.
Physical Description:
5.5 Linear feet
Repository:
The papers of painter De Hirsh Margules measure 5.5 linear feet and date from 1888-2001, with the bulk dating from 1923-1965. The papers contain biographical material, and business and personal correspondence, including letters from Alfred Stiegliz, John Marin, Henry Miller, Max Schnitzler, Charles J. Connick, Louis M. Eilshemius, Alex King, and Myron Lechay. Also found are writings, printed material, scrapbooks, photographs, works of art and audio recordings documenting Margules' personal life and professional career.

Scope and Content Note

Scope and Content Note
The papers of painter De Hirsh Margules measure 5.5 linear feet and date from 1888-2001, with the bulk dating from 1923-1965. The papers contain biographical material, and business and personal correspondence, including letters from Alfred Stiegliz, John Marin, Henry Miller, Max Schnitzler, Charles J. Connick, Louis M. Eilshemius, Alex King, and Myron Lechay. Also found are writings, printed material, scrapbooks, photographs, works of art and audio recordings documenting Margules' personal life and professional career.
Biographical material consists of Margules' curriculum vitae, address books, war ration books, press credentials, passports, naturalization documents, membership and social security cards, and memorial material on De Hirsh and Blanche Margules.
Correspondence of De Hirsh Margules covers both personal and business matters. Family correspondents include his wife Blanche London, her parents, De Hirsh's mother Rosa and his sister Sam. There is correspondence with Jean and Harrison Horblit, friends and business associates of the Margules, as well as correspondence with his girlfriend, Marieli Kailin Mandel. Other correspondents include Alfred Stieglitz, John Marin, Henry Miller, Max Schnitzler, Charles J. Connick, Louis M. Eilshemius, Alex King, Myron Lechay, and two letters from New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman. There are single letters from Sasha Kolin; New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay; Lawrence F. O'Brien, special assistant to President John F. Kennedy; Buckminster Fuller. This last letter was not addressed exclusively to Margules. Other personal correspondence includes letters, postcards and greeting cards from family members and friends. Other business correspondents include galleries and museums such as Babcock Galleries, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Niveau Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Brooklyn Museum, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Ferargil Gallery, Feigl Gallery, Guggenheim Museum, Worcester Art Museum and Walker Art Center.
Writings consist mostly of poems by De Hirsh Margules, sometimes appearing in multiple draft forms, as well as a longer work titled "Mulberry Bend." Also included within the series are notebooks filled with poems and works of prose, the latter expounding upon his theories and ideas. Writings by other authors range from poetry to works of prose, criticism and biography, including A. Lincoln Gillespie, Jr., Kenneth Lawrence Beaudoin, David Weber, Aaron Frankel, James Grady, Dick Higgins, and Esther Gilman, among others. There are three illustrated writings by Alfred Jensen. Audio recordings contain a sound tape reel of De Hirsh Margules reciting his poems Rainbow and Mulberry Bend.
Printed material includes newspaper and magazine clippings, press releases, exhibition announcements, catalogues and books. Scrapbooks include printed material, newspaper and magazine clippings, and exhibition announcements on the career of De Hirsh Margules. Also included are two scrapbooks by Blanche London Margules, representing newspaper clippings of her writing, among others.
Works of Art include an oil painting on wood and sketchbooks by Margules. Also included are six collages in a series by Kenneth Lawrence Beaudoin titled "Eye Poems"; and text-based drawings/writings by A. Lincoln Gillespie, Jr.
Photographs, transparencies and slides include works of art by De Hirsh and Blanche London Margules. Also included are personal photographs of the Margules', their friends, family and students, and two folders of photographs of Marieli Kailin Mandel.

Arrangement

Arrangement
The De Hirsh Margules papers are organized into 8 series:
  • Missing Title
  • Series 1: Biographical Material, 1888-1978, undated (Box 1, 6; 0.2 linear feet)
  • Series 2: Correspondence, 1923-2000, undated (Box 1-3; 2.8 linear feet)
  • Series 3: Writings, 1936-1965, undated (Box 4; 1.0 linear feet)
  • Series 4: Printed Material, 1933-2001, undated (Box 5; 0.2 linear feet)
  • Series 5: Scrapbooks, 1922-1957, undated (Box 5, 7; 0.2 linear feet)
  • Series 6: Photographs, 1926-1992, undated (Box 5, 7; 0.8 linear feet)
  • Series 7: Works of Art, 1948, undated (Box 6, 7; 0.4 linear feet)
  • Series 8: Audio Recordings, undated (Box 6; 1 folder)

Biographical Note

Biographical Note
De Hirsh Margules (1899-1965) was a painter in New York, NY. Margules was born in Jasse, Romania and arrived in New York City at only ten months of age. His parents were in the Yiddish Theater; his father, Edouard was a playwright/director, and his mother, Rosa, was an actress. Margules received much of his art education outside of the conventional art institutional framework. Early on, he studied with Edwin Randby in Pennsylvania from 1917-1918, but it was really his neighbor, the painter Benno Greenstein, who encouraged Margules to pursue a career in the arts. From 1919-1921 he studied period architecture, design and decoration at the New York Evening School of Art and Design.
By 1922, Margules began working nights as a police reporter for the City News Association of New York, a job he would hold until 1942. However, he continued to study and paint during the day, this time working with Myron Lechay.
In 1927 Margules took a leave of absence from the City News Association to travel to Paris. He studied at the Musée du Louvre, and painted landscapes in Montmartre, Paris; Fontenay-près-Vézelay, Burgundy; and Tunis, Africa. In 1929 Margules returned to New York and met artist/dealer Alfred Stieglitz, who quickly became his most trusted friend and advisor. It was through Stieglitz that Margules was introduced to John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Rosenfeld, Stuart Davis and Jan Matulka. While Margules would benefit from his relations with all of these artists, it was John Marin who would become his most important mentor. He felt that Marin was the only one who could help him with the formal problems he was having with painting.
Margules lived most of his life in Greenwich Village and was a well-known member of the colorful and vivacious arts community. He was commonly recognized by his affable demeanor, but mostly it was his attire, particularly the dark blue beret that he was rarely seen without. To his friends he was known simply as "the Baron."
De Hirsh Margules has been called an abstract realist. He used saturated colors and bold textures in the construction of his abstract landscapes, but more specifically it was his interest in the concept of "time painting" or "time perspective" that propelled his work. It was through the physical rendering and representation of his subject matter that he explored the psychological concepts of time. From 1936-1937 Margules established "Another Place," an exhibition space set up in his New York City apartment at 43 West 8th Street. Over a two year period there were fourteen solo-exhibitions by Margules and other artists.
He taught painting in 1951 at Ball State College in Muncie, Indiana, and at the New York Equity Workshop in 1952. In 1951 Elaine de Kooning wrote a piece about his working methods in the December edition of Art News.
De Hirsh Margules died from a heart attack in 1965. He was 65 years old.

Administration

Author
Justin Brancato
Provenance
The papers were donated to the Archives in 2005 by Elita Agee.
Processing Information
The papers were processed by Justin Brancato in May, 2009.

Using the Collection

Preferred Citation
De Hirsh Margules papers, 1888-2001, bulk 1923-1965. Archives of America Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Restrictions on Access
The De Hirsh Margules papers are open for research. Use requires an appointment.
Terms of Use
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.

Keywords

Keywords table of terms and types.
Keyword Terms Keyword Types
Writings Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Photographs Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Notebooks Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Sketchbooks Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Sound recordings Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Poems Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Poets -- New York (State) -- New York Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Works of art Topical Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Scrapbooks Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Oil paintings Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Collages Genre Form Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Worcester Art Museum Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Weber, David A. Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Stieglitz, Alfred, 1864-1946 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Brooklyn Museum Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Walker Art Center Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Babcock Galleries Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Beaudoin, Kenneth Lawrence, 1913- Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Buffalo Fine Arts Academy Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Connick, Charles J., 1875-1945 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Eilshemius, Louis M. (Louis Michel), 1864-1941 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Feigl Gallery Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Ferargil Galleries Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Frankel, Aaron Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Fuller, R. Buckminster (Richard Buckminster), 1895- Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Gillespie, Al Lincoln, Jr. Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Gilman, Esther Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Grady, James Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Higgins, Dick, 1938- Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Horblit, Harrison D. Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Horblit, Jean Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Jensen, Alfred, 1903-1981 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Kolin, Sacha, 1911-1981 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
King, Alex Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Lehman, Herbert H. (Herbert Henry), 1878-1963 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Lechay, Myron, 1898-1972 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Mandel, Marieli Kailin Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Lindsay, John V. Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Margules, Blanche London Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Miller, Henry, 1891- Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Marin, John, 1870-1953 Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Whitney Museum of American Art Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
O'Brien, Lawrence F. Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Niveau Gallery (New York, N.Y.) Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Corporate Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid
Schnitzler, Max, 1903- Personal Name Search Smithsonian Collections Search ArchiveGrid

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