Lee Gatch was born outside Baltimore, Maryland in 1902. He enrolled in the Maryland Institute of Art where he began his formal artistic training. While enrolled he had the opportunity to study under Leon Kroll and John Sloan. After graduation and armed with a traveling scholarship Gatch enrolled in the American School at Fontainebleau, France. However, he became dissatisfied with the classes there, and so in 1924 he moved to Paris, where he enrolled at the Académie Modern with Moise Kisling and André Lhote, a cubist academician. While in France, Gatch came in contact with the paintings of Andre Derain, Edouard Vuillard, and Pierre Bonnard. He greatly admired their application of color to create a sense of space. Gatch returned to the United States in 1925. He had his first one-man show in 1932 in New York. He spent the summer of 1935 in Yaddo, an artists' colony in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., with the Precisionist artist Elsie Driggs, whom he later married. The couple moved to Lambertville, N.J., where he lived the rest of his life on a secluded farm. The landscape of western New Jersey provided his source of subject matter during most of his career. Like his contemporaries such as Avery, Dove, and Knaths, Gatch attempted to create a personal individual style which was drawn on the American representational tradition but which transcended this tradition in order to find meaning through design and color.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Gatch's work was widely exhibited, including representation in the Venice Biennales of 1950 and 1956. His paintings were popular, and the artist received many awards from American museums. In 1965 he received a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was inducted into the Academy the following year. He continued to work steadily until his death in 1968.
In the 1960s, when Lee Gatch created Archaic Tree, he was living a largely secluded life in western New Jersey with his wife, the artist Elsie Driggs. During this period, Gatch was exploring a range of experimental techniques, incorporating thick impasto, collaged fragments of canvas, and even thin slabs of stone into his paintings. The result is a surface alive with texture and layered meaning. Archaic Tree reflects a style that is both symbolic and deeply personal. In moving toward a non-objective language, Gatch allowed color to become the primary vehicle of expression, shaping the emotional and spiritual resonance of the work.
The title itself may carry a dual significance. On one hand, archaic tree can be read as an allusion to the tree as a timeless and universal symbol, an emblem of endurance, regeneration, and interconnectedness found across ancient cultures and philosophies. On the other hand, the word archaic may just as readily describe the physicality of Gatch’s own process: the rough-sewn elements, the layering of materials, and the raw, elemental construction of the work. In this sense, the title reflects both subject, composition, and method.
Staempfli Gallery, NY
World House Galleries, Herbert Mayer
Dennis Osborne, Osborne Marquis Ltd., International Fine Art Consultants and Appraisers, CT
World House Galleries, 987 Madison Avenue, New York, NY, May 17-June 18, 1960
Staempfli Gallery, January 22-February 16, 1974
