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Herman Cherry

American abstract painter 1909–1992

BiographyHerman Cherry was born in Atlantic City on April 10, 1909, and grew up in Philadelphia, where he studied art in a local settlement house. As a teen, he moved with his family to Los Angeles and dropped out of high school to work for 20th Century-Fox, designing blueprints for sets. Cherry studied with the noted painter Stanton MacDonald-Wright in Los Angeles and with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League in New York. Back in Los Angeles in the 1930s he ran a gallery and produced murals for the WPA. In 1945 he relocated to Woodstock, New York. Over the next few years he produced wire constructions and began painting in an abstract manner. He showed in New York galleries and was associated with the abstract expressionist painters of the New York School. Cherry was also a published poet.

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