Biography
David Bertland Cheskin was born in Ukraine (Russia) in 1909. He was brought to the United States as a child and went to college at the University of Illinois, graduating in 1931 with a degree in engineering. During the 1930s, perhaps because of the dearth of jobs in his chosen field, he worked as an artist. In Chicago he was the founder and president of Chicago Artists Equity, the local branch of a national artists' union. He married Nina Devyatkin, and they had a daughter Judith Adrian in 1938.
Cheskin worked on a manuscript, "A Pictorial History of the United States of America," in the mid-1930s and painted easel works. His "Waiting for Work" was shown at the 44th Annual Exhibition of Artists of Chicago and Vicinity at the Art Institute in 1940. In 1940 he also completed a commission for a Post Office mural in Oregon, IL "The Pioneer and Democracy."
Using his engineering background Cheskin worked for Universal Oil Company. And in the late 1940s he started his own structural engineering firm, the David B. Cheskin Company. Between 1950 and 1965 he received 17 patents related to this work. He served as president of the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois in 1974-1975 and 1975-1976. He died in Evanston, IL in 1994.
Critical Analysis
There are not many examples of Cheskin's work from which to deduce a clear style. His "Stockyard" (c.1935) shows the influence of Thomas Hart Benton in its dramatic figure of a butcher with a sledgehammer and the undulating forms of the butcher and the water tower in the background. Photos of some of Cheskin's easel paintings look almost like a collage of remarkable faces, presented in a dramatic style reminiscent of the Ashcan School. In Cheskin's mural for Oregon, IL, the left side shows several workers: a woman with a pail, a man with an axe, and a blacksmith at his anvil. The right side depicts a man reading a newspaper and an orator addressing a small crowd of people. Overall the mural is a much quieter work than the easel paintings and the subjects' faces are considerably less dramatic.
Murals
- Oregon, Illinois - Post Office: The Pioneer and Democracy
References
- (Cheskin Patents) (Google Patents).
- David B. Cheskin, Chicago Tribune April 20 (1994).
- David B. Cheskin papers (Archives of American Art).
- Forty-fourth Annual Exhibition - Artists of Chicago and Vicinity. Art Institute of Chicago , Chicago, IL (1940).
- History / Past Presidents / Khan Sculpture (Structural Engineers Association of Illinois).