Olga with Raised Arms
Artist
Robert J. Wilbert
(American, 1929-2016)
Datec. 1965
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions32 × 30 in. (81.3 × 76.2 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineGift of Gretchen Wilbert, 2019
Object numberUAC6669
DescriptionFrom 1961 to 1995, painter and Wayne State instructor Robert Wilbert was represented by the Donald Morris Gallery in Birmingham, MI. In an interview printed in the 2011 monograph Ennobling the Ordinary, Donald’s wife Florence and son Steven drop the names of several likely influences on Wilbert’s work: still life masters Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and Giorgio Morandi; figurative painters Philip Pearlstein and Balthus; modern European artists Cézanne, Manet, Beckmann and Matisse; and Americans as diverse in style as John Singer Sargent and Milton Avery. Yet they admit Wilbert differs from all of these — he’s less illusionistic than Pearlstein, “fussier” than Matisse, detached yet compassionate, a “realist… interested in abstract issues,” etcetera. The portrait that emerges from the discussion is of a subtle and meticulous craftsman, a balancer, a thoughtful painter in careful, considered dialogue with every element of his work.Wilbert’s 1964 portrait of his friend and fellow Wayne State art instructor Olga Constantine might look somewhat unfinished to those familiar with his later paintings; but the muted tones he favored, the greens and reds, the tension in the pose, and the savvy sense of contrast and composition that mark his work are on full display here. Constantine’s almost mask-like face, simple but strongly rendered, stares out from the dark nimbus of her hair, suggesting an intense intellect.
Like Wilbert, Detroiter Olga Constantine was born in 1929. She earned a BFA and an MA from Wayne State in the early ‘50s, and began teaching there in 1953. Her guidance was influential to many noted Detroit artists, including quilter Carole Harris, ceramicist John Glick, and perhaps most notably conceptual artist James Lee Byers, with whom Constantine maintained a long friendship and ongoing correspondence while Byers lived in Japan. (Wilbert was given Byers’ letters to Constantine by her estate upon her death in 1997; he subsequently donated them to the Smithsonian. They were displayed at the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery at WSU in 2019.)
Text by Sean Bieri
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Born in Chicago, Robert Wilbert attended his first figure drawing session at the age of ten. He was still in grad school when one of his watercolors was included in an exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1956, Wilbert began teaching at Wayne State University, where he stayed for 38 years, becoming one of the school’s most respected art instructors. He designed a postage stamp commemorating Michigan’s sesquicentennial in 1987, and his portrait of governor James Blanchard is on display at the capitol in Lansing. In 2010, Wilbert’s signature joined those of other great artists inscribed on the ceiling beams of the venerable Scarab Club — the same institution that, fifty years earlier, had awarded him a $100 first place prize in a watercolor exhibition. Wilbert died in 2016; in October of 2019, an ofrenda altar, featuring a self-portrait, his brushes, and a favorite mannequin, was built in his honor at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
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