A lifelong painter who was also a highly regarded art conservator, John Alexander Steele (1922-2017) entered the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1949, when the city had become host to an array of international artists.  Many had fled Hitler's regime, including Josef and Anni Alpers, and Laszlo Maholy-Nagy. 

 

Cross-currents from European avant-garde work reflects these profound influences on John, including his high relief "Nude" and "Frogs on Leaves" which won prizes in 1955 and 1956 respectively at Chicago's annual "Exhibition Momentum."

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By the late 1950s, John was at the Art Students' League of New York, where Hans Hoffman was the prevailing influence.  In the 1960s, John was in Washington, D.C. where he continued to refine his own Abstract Expressionist vision, energized by the work of the Washington Color School.

   

In his later career, John's art depicted subjects from the natural world with a reverence for the earthy beauty of nature that he inherited from a long line of painters in his Scottish background, including Joseph Farquharson (1846-1935) a member of the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh.

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At John's death in 2017,

490 of his paintings survive,

many of them catalogued in

the 2018 publication, 

Expanding the Vision:

The Art of John Alexander Steele  

https://www.politics-prose.com

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