Art on the Move - Ney Print

Lloyd "Bill" Raymond Ney

Date of Birth: 03/08/1893
Place of Birth: Friedensburg, Pennsylvania
Date of Death: 05/10/1965 Please note date of OBIT is May 10, 1965. He died on Monday prior to 5/10/1965
Place of Death: New Hope, Pennsylvania

Discipline(s): Painter, Sculptor

Lloyd "Bill" Raymond Ney was a modernist painter of the abstract. He studied at the Industrial School of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, afterwards recalling that "it took me twenty years to forget the scars from five years in an art school."

After serving in World War I, he traveled to Europe in 1920 on the Cresson award money he won in 1917 and lived in Paris for five years amidst the vibrant Left Bank art scene. In 1925 he moved to New Hope, where he would live for forty years, painting and working odd jobs in

Composition

order to avoid the pressure of creating salable art.

He invested in real estate, hoping to initiate in New Hope an art scene to rival the one in Paris. After some controversy, Ney was commissioned to paint the first abstract murals in a government post office, which was located in New London, Ohio. A non-objective painter, Ney exhibited his work internationally. He also taught painting locally and nationally, attempting to reform art education.

IT WAS SAID ...

"The non-objective painter is searching for that inner order of truth, beauty and reality, not the surface aspect."
Lloyd R. Ney



		Lloyd "Bill" Raymond Ney
		BIOGRAPHY Education and Training Industrial School of Art (now University of the Arts), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1913-1914 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1914-1918 Veteran of WWI Cresson Traveling Fellowship, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Europe, 1920 Travel to Europe, particularly Paris, France, 1924 Teachers and Influences Studied under Henri McCarter at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Pablo Picasso and Vasily Kandinsky, Paris, France William Blake, England Connection to Bucks County Although he traveled widely, Ney lived in New Hope for forty years. He changed the face of New Hope. Building and remodeling property on Mechanic Street, he transformed it into an artist's community, dubbed the Latin Quarter. He also built the Tow Path House in New Hope. Ney introduced an abstract, non objective aesthetic to the area. Unlike the impressionists who dominated the New Hope art scene, Ney was an outspoken modernist. In 1927 he led a group of progressive artists in their secession from Phillips Mill, which they regarded as too conservative. Ironically, in 1960 his painting won top prize at the Phillips Mill
		Exhibition. He was building a Ney Museum of art in New Hope, although he died a few weeks before its completion. Ney discovered the paintings of Joseph Pickett, a New Hope shop keeper. He bought them for $15, later selling them to a dealer. Today Pickett is recognized as a great primitive painter. Colleagues and Affiliations Harry Rosin Members of the New Group and the Independents, such as Peter Keenan, Robert Hogue, R.A.D. Miller, Charles Evans, Ralston Crawford, Henry Baker, C.F. Ramsey and other modernists. Discovered naive painter Joseph Pickett Established a gallery in the old Pickett store for other non-objective artists Developed Mechanic Street as a street of shops and built the Towpath House Restaurant, in 1947 Ney built his own museum on Ney Alley, New Hope, 1964 In October of 1978, Ney widow, Jean, and his daughter Gretchen Laugier, opened the museum for an 85th anniversary exhibition of his paintings.



			Lloyd "Bill" Raymond Ney
		Major Solo Exhibitions Solo watercolor show, 57th Street, New York, New York , 1936 Delgado Museum, New Orleans, Louisana, 1948 Avant-Garde Gallery, New York, New York, 1958 Coryell Gallery, Lambertville, New Jersey, 1980 Bill Ney's Mechanic Street, River Center for the Arts, New Hope, Pennsylvania, 1982 Major Group Exhibitions College Art Association International Exhibition, 1932 Little International Show, Mellon Galleries, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1933 First Show at the Pickett Galleries, New Hope, Pennsylvania, 1934 Guggenheim Museum, (Museum Of Non-objective Art),New York, New York, 1941,1942,1956 Phillips Mill Community Association, New Hope, Pennsylvania, 1947, 1960 Salon des Réalités Nouvelle, Paris, France, 1947 International group shows in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, from 1947 to 1955. Bucks County Council of the Arts, Rodman House Galleries, Doylestown, Pennsylvania,1979 10th Anniversary Celebration Exhibit, Bucks County Council of the Arts, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 1983 Major Collections Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York, 1946
		Commissions University of Pennsylvania, Ivy Ball, mural, 1921 New London, Ohio, post office mural, 1939 Teaching and Professional Appointments Head of painting school, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas, 1930 Government Teaching Project, St. Thomas Ogontz Junior College Taught painting and art history, Converse College, Spartanburg, South Carolina Taught classes at: the New Hope School of Art 1934, with Harry Rosin, John Folinsbee, Harry Leith-Ross, Charles Child and Alden Wicks,Maine, 1921 Easton, Pennsylvania. Major Awards Cresson Scholarship, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1917