Erle Loran

Loran was born on October 2, 1905 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.[1] He attended the University of Minnesota and graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1926.[1][2] In 1926, he was awarded the Chaloner Foundation Scholarship to study in Europe for the next four years.[2][3] He studied the artwork of French painter Paul Cézanne, and he lived in Cézanne's studio in Aix-en-Provence.[1][4]

Loran returned to Minnesota due to tuberculosis,[4] and he became a painter in his own right. He was painted landscapes and portraits, and he won the Grand Sweepstakes Prize at the 1934 Minnesota State Fair.[3] Loran was also an arts educator. He was a professor of art at the University of California, Berkeley from 1937 to 1981.[2] He authored Cézanne's Composition,[1] a 1943 book in which he compared Cézanne's paintings to what he saw in Provence.[5] Loran was also a collector of Mexican and African art from the Pre-Columbian era.[4][6]

Loran married Clyta Sisson on May 8, 1937. Clyta died of cancer in March 1982. Loran later married Ruth Schorer,[4] whose first husband was art critic Mark Schorer and daughter was ballet dancer Suki Schorer.[7] was his second wife. Loran died on May 13, 1999 in Berkeley, California, at 93.[1][4] His work is at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,[8] the Oakland Museum of California,[9] and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.[10] His art collection was acquired by the de Young Museum in 2008.[6] His widow died in 2010.[7]

• Loran, Erle (1943). Cézanne's Composition: Analysis of His Form, with Diagrams and Photos of his Motifs. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. OCLC 614357650.