Biography

Louis Bunce moved from his birthplace in Lander, Wyoming to Portland, Oregon when he was 13. After high school he studied at the Museum Art School in Portland before moving to New York to enroll at the Art Students League, along with his Portland friend William Givler. Back in Oregon he received commissions for work on two post office murals. He worked for the WPA Federal Art Center in Salem and collaborated on murals at the Bush Elementary School. He returned to New York in 1940 and in the following years developed close ties with the art communities of both New York and Portland. He worked for the Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation during the war, after which he accepted an invitation from his old friend Givler to join the faculty of the Museum Art School. His Portland gallery became a showplace for avant-garde art.

Critical Analysis

Bunce's New York associations included artists at the forefront of modern art in America, including Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollock. In the 1930s and 1940s Bunce himself experimented wit Cubism and Surrealism, moving to further abstraction in his work of the 1950s and beyond. His mural for the Portland Airport highlighted the clash between the traditional and modern artists of Oregon. Throughout his career Bunce retained a connection to the Oregon outdoors through his use of light and texture.

Murals

• Grants Pass, Oregon - Post Office: Rogue River Indians
• Portland, Oregon - Portland Baha'i Center: Development of St. Johns

References

1. Louis Bunce (1907-1983) (Oregon Encyclopedia).
2. Louis Bunce, American Painter, 1907-1983 (Portland Art Museum).
3. Roger Hull, Louis Bunce: Dialogue with Modernism. Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University , Salem, OR (2017).
4. Louis DeMott Bunce Auction Price Results (invaluable).
5. Bonnie Hull, Sleuthing Louis Bunce, On The Way December 8 (2014).