Oral history interview with Edna Andrade, 1987 April 1-29

Collection Information

Size: 70 Pages, Transcript

Format: Originally recorded on 4 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 7 digital wav files. Duration is 3 hrs., 31 minutes.

Summary: An interview of Edna Andrade conducted 1987 April 1-29, by Patricia Likos, for the Archives of American Art.

Andrade speaks of her upbringing in Virginia, her education at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the 1930s under Daniel Garber, Henry McCarter, and George Harding; visiting the Barnes Foundation; her travels in Europe, Egypt, and India, and living and working as a teacher and a graphic designer in New Orleans, Washington, and Philadelphia. She discusses the influence of the Bauhaus and Paul Klee on her work and teaching, her marriage to C. Preston Andrade, working in the training and education division of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, the shift in her work from realism to abstraction, Optical "Op" art; her associations with the Easthampton Gallery in New York and the Marian Locks Gallery in Philadelphia, and changes in the Philadelphia art scene. She recalls Violet Oakley and the Pinto Brothers, among others.

Biographical/Historical Note

Edna W. Andrade (1917-2008) was a painter and art educator. She was born in Virginia, and lived and worked in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Provenance

These interviews are part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.

Language Note

English .

Funding

Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. This interview received support from the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative Pool.