800 Chestnut St, San Francisco, CA 94133, United States
San Francisco Art Institute
800 Chestnut St, San Francisco, CA 94133, United States
San Francisco Art Institute
Bronze Star Medal
Rae Tonkel, the artist's second wife
Bran Ferren, the artist's son
Stanley William Hayter
Pablo Picasso
Alfred Hitchcock
John Ferren was born as John Millard Ferren on October 17, 1905, in Pendleton, Oregon, United States. He was a son of James William Ferren, an army officer, and Verna Zay Westfall.
John spent his childhood in the Northwest of the United States.
John Ferren studied at the Polytechnic High School in Los Angeles.
In 1925, he attended classes at the California School of Fine Arts (currently San Francisco Art Institute). The same period, the young man was taught by a stonecutter from Italy and created his first portrait busts in clay and plasticine. He began to take interest in Buddhist and Eastern philosophy.
Four years later, the artist travelled to York City and Paris where he explored the art of Hans Hofmann and Henri Matisse. While in the capital of France, Ferren briefly attended the classes at the Sorbonne, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Ranson. Instead of the solid formal studying, he developed his artistic skills himself by working with his contemporary colleagues, such as Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso and Joaquín Torres-García.
John Ferren started his career as a sculptor and stone carver in 1926. By the beginning of the new decade, the artist shifted to painting and had his debut solo exhibition in San Francisco in 1930. A year later, he moved to Paris.
While in the capital of France, Ferren became close to the group Abstraction Création aimed to promote abstraction and surrealism. The artist met Henri Matisse’s brother, Pierre, who later, in 1935, helped Ferren to organize a personal show in New York City.
John Ferren worked in William Hayter’s prominent workshop Atelier 17 where he met such artist as Joan Miró, Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp. Hayter’s art theories influenced the style of Ferren who began to produce one of his most successful works – the relief sculptures with the etched lines filled by plaster on a metal plate.
The artist came back to New York City in 1938 and began to take interest in Taoism and Zen Buddhism through his friend and colleague avant-garde artist Yun Gee.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, John Ferren joined the army. From May 1943, he had served as a chief of publications at the Psychological Warfare Division. He was discharged on July 1945.
During the post-war period, Ferren gradually adopted the principles of the Abstract Expressionism shifting from the geometric abstraction to more classical figure paintings and still-lifes.
The artist started his teaching activity giving art lessons at the Queens College, the Brooklyn Museum Art School, and Cooper Union, all in New York City.
During his life, John Ferren took part at many solo and group exhibitions around the United States, including the Ninth Street Show in 1951.
He co-founded the group of abstract expressionist artists called ‘The Club’ and chaired it in 1955.
At the end of the 1950s, the artist was invited by the moviemaker Alfred Hitchcock to work as an artistic consultant on his movies ‘The Trouble with Harry’ (1955) and ‘Vertigo’ (1958).
John Ferren was active as an artist till the end of his days.
John Ferren was a prolific artist whose talent was recognized by such awards, as the Honorary mention from the Brooklyn Society of Artists, the First Prize of the Provincetown Arts Festival and the abroad grant from the United States Department of State for Lebanon.
A huge posthumous retrospective of Ferren’s artworks was held in 1979 at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Nowadays, the artist’s heritage is preserved in many public and private collections, including the Pierre Matisse Gallery, the Stable Gallery, the Rose Fried Gallery, the Catherine Rich Perlow Gallery, the David Findlay Junior Gallery, all in New York City. Some of his artworks can also be seen at the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, all in New York City, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Phillips Collection, all three in Washington, DC, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy.
In 2007, one of Ferren’s paintings was purchased at Sotheby's in New York City for $109,000.
Saint Tropez (Abstract)
Untitled (No. 8)
Untitled
Three Rocks
RVG
Yellow Field
Branches
Composition
Rock Totems
Untitled
Navaho
Untitled
Broken Blue
Untitled
One World
Composition in Yellow Colours
Fight as Sky
Desert Landscape
Composition (Brun)
Untitled
Untitled
Paris Abstract
Composition on the map of France
Untitled
Contemplations on Geraniums
Ski
Mallorca
New York Summer Landscape
The Desert
Outdoors
Red Spot
The Witch Doctor
The Bush
The Changeling
Greenock
Untitled I
Sidon No. 3
Composition
Red Rose
Pretty
Abstract Composition
Sea Forms
Blue Green Ground
Medeanus
Untitled
Quiet
Untitled
Composition
John Ferren believed that the main goal of the art which he called “great common denominator between knowledge and insight” was to explore the inner world of humans.
Quotations:
"I placed my hand on a tree trunk and instantaneously felt that every element of the landscape was alive – the light, air, ground and trees. All were interrelated, living the same life and (this is important in my art) their forms were all interchangeable."
"Art is no more passively perceived than is a mathematical formula."
Quotes from others about the person
"Ferren ought be a man who is interesting, he is the only American painter foreign painters in Paris consider as a painter and whose paintings interest them. He is young yet and might do . . . that thing called abstract painting." Gertrude Stein, American author and art collector
John Ferren was married twice.
His first wife became Inez Chatfield.
On December 1949, Ferren married an impressionist painter Rae Tonkel. The family produced one child, a son Bran who works as a designer, inventor and businessman.
