Rolph Scarlett was an abstract, modernism artist who was described by Hilla Rebay as “her greatest discovery.”  The acrobatic geometry and bright color palette of his art work speak to his continuous experimentation during a long and prolific career.  Throughout his life, he was able to expertly absorb the styles of the times and craft them to suit his own means.

Rolph Scarlett was born in 1889 in Canada, and was taught to paint by his grandmother. During his brief studies at the Art Students League in 1908 and 1909, he had the good fortune to work with William Merritt Chase, John Sloan and George Luks. Scarlett honed his graphic and color skills during this period and his works exhibited both the compositional choices typical of the Ashcan School and a symbolist feel not unlike Oscar Bluemner.

Scarlett’s romance with Non-Objective art began with a chance meeting with Paul Klee in Geneva in 1923 while traveling on business for the Omega Watch Company. Klee encouraged Scarlett to try his hand at small abstract sketches. The following year, Scarlett executed his first abstract drawings. The best of these initial efforts won a juried competition at the Toledo Museum of Art.

A number of years later, Hilla Rebay met Scarlett through an innovative education program she had organized at The Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later to becoming the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum). He was often described by Hilla as her greatest discovery; Rebay purchased more than sixty of his non-objective oils for the Museum, which also employed him as a docent and lecturer. A major painting by Scarlett titled Composition, 1940 adorned the entrance of the museum for many years.

When Rudolf Bauer came to America in 1939, Scarlett was anxious to meet the artist whose work dominated the early Guggenheim collection. Despite the language barrier, the two artists developed a strong rapport.  Scarlett would visit Bauer at his villa on the beach in Deal, New Jersey, armed with a portfolio of preparatory drawings for Bauer to critique. He would then translate these drawings into large scale paintings, many of which were purchased by Rebay for the Museum. When Scarlett, unaware of the dispute between Bauer and the Guggenheim Foundation, asked Bauer why he wasn’t painting, Bauer allegedly offered the cryptic reply, "You paint my paintings now."

Scarlett’s association with Bauer and Rebay would unfortunately hasten his descent into obscurity. First Bauer’s relationship with Guggenheim fell apart, then Hilla was banished from the Guggenheim. The result was that most of the "Art of Tomorrow," including Scarlett’s work, was sent to the basement. The sad result is that a magnificent body of work, aside from those purchased by Rebay, has lain dormant for many decades. This includes over one hundred pieces of avant-garde silver jewelry, perhaps two hundred paintings and a lifetime’s output of works on paper. On a more positive note, eight hundred industrial design drawings were recently donated to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts by a private collector. These have been catalogued and exhibited in various exhibitions. The Macdonald Stewart Art Centre in Scarlett’s native Guelph, Canada is pleased to be the caretaker of sixty works in oil and on paper by their native son. While a small cadre of dealers and curators continue to sell and resell Scarlett’s blue ribbon 1940s Guggenheim period, an astonishing body of his work has been mostly ignored.

What may tie Schawinsky, Fogel, and Scarlett together was their dedication to experimentation. Scarlett’s work is always experimental and fresh, with tantalizing visual references. Before the Guggenheim period, glimpses of Marin, Leger and Picasso blend seamlessly into Scarlett’s developing visual vocabulary. When Bauer enters his life there is a decade of work that could easily be mistaken for Bauer were it not for its brighter palette and acrobatic geometry. Scarlett, like many artists, seemed to absorb styles effortlessly and employ them to suit his own ends. Since Scarlett’s work is rarely dated, it is an ongoing exercise to determine when he was ahead of his time and when he had his hand on the stylistic pulse of the moment.

What one sees later, after the Guggenheim period, is Scarlett’s effort to reestablish himself. The artist looks both inward and outward to the art world for clues. Jackson Pollock’s success must have irked him because Scarlett’s drip paintings from the 1950s outdo even Pollock (even though a threatening letter from Baroness Rebay suggests she did not approve of this pursuit). As Scarlett lived well into his 90s, one notices work which has elements of Beckman, Motherwell, Hans Hoffman and even DeKooning. With a major retrospective of his artwork and a book about his jewelry in the planning stages, Scarlett’s prodigious output is at last coming into focus.