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Larry Gluck Watercolor Painting - Virgin Islands. This Larry Gluck Watercolo is in Very Good condition as pictured. It measures 15 1/2" by 22 1/2" by sight and is framed to 20 1/4" by 26 1/4". Lawrence Jerrold Gluck was born to Maurice and Jane Gluck, a pharmacist and homemaker, on April 9, 1931, and grew up in Queens, New York. As a child, he would sneak downstairs at night to hear his father play the piano, and by the age of six, he was taking piano lessons himself. He can't remember the first time he put pencil to paper, but what is certain is that he was drawing and sketching from a very early age. Unlike piano, this was something he didn't have to learn. The lines and shapes seemed to draw themselves. He soon began painting portraits of family and friends and by the age of thirteen, he was studying under the Italian portrait master Giuseppe Trotta, a classmate of Pablo Picasso himself. For three solid years Larry worked under the eccentric master. Trotta had an uncanny ability to bring someone to life on canvas and passed much of his wisdom on to the young apprentice. During these formative years, Larry was inspired to become a portrait painter in earnest. After graduating high school, Gluck pursued his dream by attending the Pratt Institute but by the time he graduated, he was both disheartened and disillusioned and did not think that he could succeed as an artist. Drafted to serve in the Korean war, he was put in charge of the 8069th Replacement Depot's paint shop and oversaw the production of signs for the Army. At night, he played the piano at the Pusan Club, the most exclusive nightspot on the Korean Peninsula. After his return home, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Adelphi College, subsequently serving briefly as an Assistant Art Director for the largest fashion advertising agency in New York, followed by work as a freelance advertising designer on Madison Avenue. It was during this time that Gluck met his future wife and they were soon married. On a vacation to the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1961, Larry and Sheila Gluck fell in love with the Caribbean paradise of Saint Thomas. They settled on Saint Thomas and planned to buy the Black Patch, a popular nightspot on the island. But when the owners decided not to sell, they were left to fend for themselves and out of necessity, Gluck picked up a brush and set his easel in the sand. His subject: the islands themselves, and in terms of medium, he explained, "it was only watercolor with its intrinsic beauty of transparency and pure color that could capture the radiance and excitement of St. Thomas." It wasn't long until he received commissions from local hotels and resorts to provide tropical landscapes for their rooms. Larry Gluck became a local celebrity, with tourists literally posing outside his mountainside home for snapshots. The Gluck name was also widely repeated on a national scale, in the pages of the New York Herald Tribune, and on the airwaves, with interviews broadcast on CBS and NBC. Gluck returned to painting in oils, developing a wholly new and original style, "Mirage D' Esprit"—truly unique paintings which appear simply as a pure field of color, but upon further examination, a face emerges, or a beautiful nude... like spirits alighting from the canvas. The family relocated to Los Angeles, and in 1975, opened their own art school, Mission: Renaissance. Soon he taught 100 students a week and in the course of teaching developed his own method of teaching painting, called the Gluck Method.See pictures for complete condition and description. From the J. Mir Collection, NY. We will always combine the shipping on multiple item purchases in the same auction. We will only combine shipping where feasible.
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