Rolph Scarlett

American (1889-1984)

Born in Ontario, Canada, Scarlett left home at age eighteen for New York City, making that city his home for long periods during his lifetime. While beginning his career as an abstract artist, Scarlett designed sets for George Bernard Shaw’s play Man and Superman, as well as designing modern furniture and creating several pavilions at the 1939 World’s Fair and stage sets for the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall.

Scarlett was the first North American artist asked to exhibit work beside that of Kandinsky, Klee and Bauer at Solomon Guggenheim’s new Museum of Non-Objective Art in 1940. During his long association with the museum, its founders remained very supportive of Scarlett, appointing him as chief lecturer, and eventually acquiring nearly sixty of his paintings and monoprints.

An important painter and printmaker during the American avant-garde movement of the 1930s and 40s, Scarlett’s style has been described as “…alive as to color and form, with challenging and stimulating rhythms…emotional and…alive with mysticism and inner order.” His works are in the permanent collections of several major museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian, and the Guggenheim.