Concerning Oscar Strobel and His Paintings

PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRODUCTIONS OF OSCAR STROBEL'S PAINTINGS BY CLAUDE BATE OF BATE STUDIO OSCAR STROBEL is an Arizonan by choice. rather than by birth or circumstance. He lives and works here because he likes the country and the people, because he is happy here and because the landscape appeals to the artist in him and because it is a constant challenge to him.

Out on the desert north of Phoenix, Mr. and Mrs. Strobel have built a rambling, comfortable "hacienda-type" adobe home, exquisitely arranged and appointed, the type of home a successful artist and a charming and fastidious wife would like to live in. The Strobel home is a story in itself, a beautiful creation on the desert, whose inspiration sprang from a Mexican hacienda far to the south of the border. Here the artist lives and works.

His subject matter is Arizona. He tries to paint pictures that people will enjoy. If he can catch a small portion of Arizona on a canvas, portray it feelingly and honestly, and if that canvas will fall into distant hands bringing with it the feeling and the touch of Arizona, he, the artist, is satisfied that he has filled his mission.

"For the artist," Oscar Strobel says, "Arizona offers great possibilities for rendering vastness, force, light and color.

"The luminous nature of the Arizona landscape, the great receding spaces, the warm, fast-changing colors and tones, bring about the accumulative power that is well worth any artist's study and effort.

"Here the painter's pallette is not limited in numbers of colors used. Brilliant colors form the basis and from this advantageous position the artist is able to create volume on a high or in a deep and sombre key.

"An Arizona landscape shows a pure feeling of light and air and with proper handlingby means of sharp contrast between light and dark masses the craftsman seldom produces a picture that looks empty even though filling it with space.

"Here the painter has the opportunity of creating interest in a low horizon and great sky by detailed play of light and shade on the ground. Here he can produce powerful as well as delightful work.

"The transparency of the atmosphere lends itself particularly to the water color artist's medium.

He believes that the "feel" of the country, the acquisition of the essential factors of distance, light and atmosphere, is not something that a person can grasp or understand on a casual visit or two to Arizona. Oscar Strobel came to Arizona in 1926. Two weeks in a resort hotel, with frequent excursions into the desert, convinced him that here was the place he had been looking for, and here he has lived since, with the exception of several trips abroad and extended journeys through Mexico and the United States.

His principal workshop has been the Arizona desert. He has seen the desert and has been in it in everyone of its moods. He has seen the desert silent and full of repose on many long, hot summer afternoons. He has seen it in the Spring when the flowers and the blossoms come to the desert. He has seen it in times of storm, when dark clouds hang threateningly over the purple mountains that rim the desert. He has seen it fresh and clean after the rains. He has seen the sun rise on the desert and sink again, studying the changing colors, trying to catch the infinite detail of pattern made by sky and desert and moving cloud.

That his paintings and water color studies portray an intimate knowledge of the desert and both gratitude and reverence for it has not come by chance. Oscar Strobel has tried to know the desert. He has studied it faithfully. And you don't do that just overnight.

He was born in Cincinnati in 1891. His first serious study of art was under Frank Duveneck in Cincinnati, and in several art schools in that city. Later he continued his art education in Chicago. Then came the World War, when he laid aside art for Democracy's sake. He served in the armed forces of the United States and following the war spent eight years traveling all over the world. He studied interior decorating in Florence and spent considerable time in Berlin, Paris and Munich.

In the middle twenties his travels brought him to Arizona and here he has made his home. His background is international; his artist's viewpoint is local.

In these pages we are privileged to show reproductions of some of his works. Again we regret that these are not in color, because color means so much to the paintings and water colors of Oscar Strobel. His works hang in private collections all over the United States. Among commissions performed in Arizona notable have been his decorations in the Cactus Society Building at Papago Park, and other decorations at the San Marcos Hotel and the Camelback Inn... R. C.