Jolán Gross-Bettelheim

Gross-Bettelheim was born in Hungary, but lived in the United States from 1925-1956.[1] She studied painting at the Budapest School of Fine Art in 1919, followed by studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna and the Akademie der Bildenden Künst in Berlin.[1] Gross-Bettelheim then studied in Paris at the Académie de Grande Chaumière between 1922-24.[1] She married a Hungarian-born radiologist,[2] Frigyes Bettelheim, and settled in Cleveland by 1925.[1] Her studies in Ohio commenced at the Cleveland School of Art with modernist painter Henry Keller.[3] She and her husband relocated to New York City in 1938.[1] As a communist, Gross-Bettelheim was a member of the John Reed Club, as well as the American Artists’ Congress.[1][4] She contributed to leftist publications such as New Masses and the Daily Worker.[1]

Gross-Bettelheim worked in Cleveland at a time when printmaking was flourishing.[5] It was a time when lithography was seen as a viable art form, rather than being limited to commercial use.[5] Interest in printmaking was bolstered by art organizations that were founded in the 1920s.[5] And the Cleveland Print Makers (CPM) was formed in 1930 by artist and teacher Kálmán Kubinyi.[6] It engaged in numerous activities to expand exposure for Cleveland printmakers, with the goal of increasing the sales of their works.[6] Its most ambitious activity was the Print Mart or Market during which artists opened a gallery to sell works to the general public.[6] The Print Market featured America Today in November 1936, an exhibition that was held in thirty U.S. cities simultaneously.[7] The show included 100 prints created by artists from the American Artists’ Congress, including Gross-Bettelheim.[7] Gross-Bettelheim also was commissioned to create a print for the CPM’s Print-a-Month series, a subscription for one print per month by Cleveland and some nonresident artists.[8]

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project (FAP) had a graphic arts division of which printmaking was a part. A graphic arts workshop was set up in Cleveland as a part of the WPA, operating officially as Graphic Arts Project No. 8048 from December 1935 to 1943, being most productive in 1936-37.[9] Gross-Bettelheim produced prints for the WPA graphics workshop, as well.[10] The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) sponsored a traveling exhibition, Fifty Prints of the Year, which included work by Gross-Bettelheim.[11]

She returned to Hungary after 1956, and died in Budapest in 1972.[1]

Gross-Bettelheim’s prints explore the darkness of the Depression, employing a cubist style that heightens the drama of cityscapes and the industrial landscape.[11][12] Sabine Kretzschmar describes Gross-Bettelheim as “the purest modernist” amongst Cleveland printmakers, reflecting the influence of German expressionism, constructivism, and cubism.[13]

Her work explored social and political issues.[14] The plight of unemployment is addressed in her print In the Employment Office (ca. 1936, lithograph) and racism in Workers Meeting (Scottsboro Boys) (ca. 1935, drypoint).[15]

The stark black and white images convey a sense of humanity being oppressed by the scale of industry. For example, Gross-Bettelheim’s ca. 1940 lithograph Assembly Line portrays a claustrophobic space filled with workers and a haunting image of lines of gas masks on a factory assembly line. Her 1936 lithograph Civilization at the Crossroads (Fascism II) depicts the rising threat of Fascism in Europe.

• Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.[16]
• Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH.[17]
• Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.[18]
• Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
• University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI.[19]
• Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH.[20]

• May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art 1927-1937 (annual exhibition) [except for 1933][1][21]
• Kokoon Club, 1932, first solo exhibition[1]
• American Today, 1936
• American Artists’ Conference Exhibition, 1938[22]
• Artists for Victory, 1942, at Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York[23]
• Artists for Victory, 1943 [show held in 36 museums simultaneously][24]
• America in the War, 1943
• Library of Congress annual print shows, Washington, DC 1943-1950[22]
• Annual Exhibition of Northwest Printmakers, Seattle Art Museum, 1944-1953[22]
• Durand-Ruel Galleries in Manhattan, 1945
• Art Institute of Chicago, 2 watercolor shows[3]
• Modernist Abstraction in American Prints, Laguna Art Museum, 1992
• Jolán Gross-Bettelheim: The American Prints, Print and Drawing Study Room of the Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa April 27-May 21, 2001
• Jolán Gross-Bettelheim: An American Printmaker in an Age of Progress” Eisenberg Gallery in the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick., NJ Mar 19, 2011 - Jul 31, 2011

• American Artists’ Congress
• List of Federal Art Project artists
• Society of American Graphic Artists

• Cleveland Artists Foundation. Covering History: Revisiting Federal Art in Cleveland 1933-1943. Cleveland: Cleveland Artists Foundation, 2006.
• Kainen, Jacob. “The Graphic Arts Division of the WPA Federal Art Project” in The New Deal Art Projects ed. Francis V. O’Connor. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1972: 155-176.
• Kretzschmar, Sabine. “Art for Everyone: Cleveland Print Makers and the WPA” in Transformations in Cleveland Art, 1796-1946: Community and Diversity in Early Modern America. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art: Distributed by Ohio University Press, 1996: 176-197.
• Stamey, Emily. Jolán Gross-Bettelheim: the American Prints. Grinnell, Iowa: Faulconer Gallery, 2001. Catalog of an exhibition held at the Print and Drawing Study Room of the Faulconer Gallery April 27-May 21, 2001.
• Transformations in Cleveland Art, 1796-1946: Community and Diversity in Early Modern America. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art: Distributed by Ohio University Press, 1996.
• Williams, Dave and Reba. “Jolan Gross-Bettelheim: A Hidden Life.” Print Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 3 (September 1990): 303-7.

• American Artists’ Congress
• Artists and the War Against Fascism: Papers of the First American Artists’ Congress. Introduction by Matthew Baigell and Julia Williams. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986.
• Adams, Clinton. “Gross-Bettelheim, Jolán (1900-1972)” in North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary, eds. Jules Heller, Nancy G. Heller. E-book: Routledge, 2013.
• Bischoff, Dan. “A feminine artist's slant on industry, war, government.” Star Ledger 3/20/2011.
• Curis, Cathy. “O.C. ART REVIEW Encounter With the Unknown: Yes, 'Modernist Abstraction in American Prints' in Laguna Beach has Calder, Pollock and Weber, but most of the 60 artists represented here are obscure.” Los Angeles TimesJune 2, 1992
• Fusco, Tony. “The W.P.A. Prints of Jolan Gross-Bettelheim.” Washington Print Club Quarterly Vol. 32, no. 2, 1996.
• Hemingway, Andrew. Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926-1956. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
• Jolán Gross-Bettelheim 1900-1972. Passau, Germany: Museum Moderner Kunst, 1996.
• Jolán Gross-Bettelheim: Graphic Works Selected from Vörösváry’s Collection. Kecskemét, Hungary: Kecskeméti Galéria, 1987.
• Jolán Gross-Bettelheim: Retrospektív Kiállítása (Retrospective Exhibition). Introduction by Loránd Hegyi. Budapest, Kiállítóterem, 1988.
• Langa, Helen. “Egalitarian Vision, Gendered Experience: Women printmakers and the WPA/FAP graphic arts project.” In The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History, eds. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. New York: Icon Editions, 1992: 409-423.
• Schwendener, Martha. “Celebrating Progress While Recoiling from It.” New York Times, June 17, 2011
• Jolan Gross-Bettelheim prints in New-Brunswickreview
• Taylor, Francis Henry. Artists for Victory: an Exhibition of Contemporary American Art: Paintings, Sculpture, Prints/sponsored by Artists for Victory, Inc. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1942.

• Works of Jolan Gross-Bettelheim at