Frode Nielsen Dann (1892 – 1984)

Los Angeles, 1927, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower right, 19 x 23 inches, ex collection Sullivan Goss An American Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA (label verso)

$7,500

Frode Dann’s Los Angeles is a rare American Scene painting depicting Southern California's largest city in the late 1920s. Painted soon after he immigrated to the United States, the present work demonstrates Dann's engagement with the light and terrain of his new home. His practice bridged European academic training and the looser, regionally inflected modernism of California during the period between the World Wars.

Born in Jelstrup, Havbro, Denmark, on September 10, 1892, Dann trained at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen and worked for about a decade as a restorer at the National Museum before immigrating to the United States in 1926. Settling in Southern California, he became active as a painter, teacher, and art critic, principally for Pasadena' Independent Star News and the The Los Angeles Times. He belonged to the California Water Color Society and the Pasadena Art Association, exhibiting regionally and at major venues including the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, San Diego Museum of Art, and San Francisco Museum of Art. A respected educator at the Otis Art Institute and critic, Dann helped shape LA's art scene during the middle portion of the 20th Century. In 1946 he married the painter Anna Katharine Skeele (also known as Katherine Skeele Dann). Together they established the Pasadena School of Fine Arts in 1951. His ties to artists involved with New Deal art projects were substantive enough that the Archives of American Art recorded a 1965 oral-history interview with him, emphasizing his role as a practitioner and chronicler of Southern California art. He is listed in Who Was Who in American Art and other standard references.