Augustus Vincent Tack (1870-1949)

Biography/Artist Information:

Augustus Vincent Tack, a painter of portraits, murals and abstractions, was born in Pittsburgh in 1870. Between 1923 and until his death in 1949 he produced approximately seventy-eight abstract paintings. "A Symbolist artist who entertained Romantic concepts about the relationship of man, God, and nature (Isaacs)" has been said of Tack.

His family was Roman Catholic and Tack attended the Jesuit school St. Francis Xavier in New York City, graduating with an A.B. degree in 1890. He then began to study art under H. Siddons Mowbray, John Twachtman and John La Farge in New York. This self-directed program developed his talent so quickly, that a painting he sent to the Society of American Artists in 1889 received the highest rating and a place of honor. In the early 1890s Tack made a trip to Europe to tour and study under Luc-Olivier Merson, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris where Merson taught from 1894. Tack also visited Claude Monet's studio at Giverny.

Through the diversity of his work his style began to evolve in 1911 from Impressionism to Symbolism, this progression resulted in complete abstraction in 1923.

Beginning in the 1920s, he painted fifteen murals for various Catholic churches and government buildings, including the New Parliament Building, Winnipeg, Canada (1920), and the Nebraska State Capitol, at Lincoln (1928). During this time he was much sought after by religious and civic institutions for mural commissions.

He also became respected for his skills at portraiture. After World War II, he painted many of the significant participants in the struggle, including General George C. Marshall (circa 1949, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.).

Tack's portraits and murals were traditional in style, but during the inter-war years, he also painted a number of mystical landscapes and abstract works on the themes of religion and creation. "They evoke, through faceted slabs of color, suggestions of timelessness and spirituality in the tradition of Albert Pinkham Ryder, Georgia O'Keeffe and Clyfford Still." Inspired by what he saw on his many trips to the Western United States, "Tack also based his compositions on photographs of the Western terrain, blowing them up ten to fifteen times their original size and tracing from them, applying the image to the canvas through the traditional mural technique of pouncing (Isaacs)."

As a Symbolist artist he was inspired by Christian theology and mysticism, Oriental Art and Philosophy, other influences can be seen in Whistler's paintings and medieval stained glass. According to Duncan Phillips, critic and patron of the arts, Tack had two sources for his ideas: "God and the Eastern ideas of serenity and storm-opposing elements that transcend time and place in eternal balance."

Tack developed a friendship with Duncan Phillips, most likely when Phillips came to New York in 1914. By 1920 Tack was on the board of the newly incorporated Phillips Memorial Art Gallery and in 1921 he was Vice-President. Phillips was the major critical and financial supporter of Tack's abstract paintings. Many of these works are housed in the Phillips Collection in Washington DC. At the time of his death in 1949, the Memorial Gallery owned thirty-five paintings by the artist, twenty-two of which were fully abstract works.

It is said that Tack inspired Morris Louis and other DC abstract painters.

Tack died in 1949 in New York City.

Source: J. Susan Isaacs, "Cosmic Landscapes, The Abstract Paintings of Augustus Vincent Tack" American Art Review, Spring 1993

Matthew Baigell, "Dictionary of American Art"

Peter Falk, "Who Was Who in American Art"

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