As with all artists, John Steele’s work should be viewed in the context of the times in which he lived. The art scene was experiencing an exciting transition when he entered the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1949.

 

Chicago had become host to many extraordinarily creative and innovative artists and thinkers. Many of those trained in the visual arts had fled Hitler’s regime, although some were not actually Bauhaus students or teachers, but advocates who espoused the avant-garde principals practiced by Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Lasio Moholy Nagy, Josef and Anni Albers and Mies van der Rohe; all of whom greatly influenced the culture of Chicago in the 1920s and1930s.

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John’s early work, from roughly the 1940s through the 1950s, reflects cross-currents from the European avant-garde, including his high relief “Nude” and “Frogs on Leaves” which won prizes in 1955 and 1956 respectively at the Art Institute’s renowned annual show, “Exhibition Momentum.”   

 

In the 1960s John devoted most of his time to abstract painting, energized by the work of a group known as the Washington Color Painters.  These artists exhibited at the newly opened Washington Gallery of Modern Art which in 1965 held the historic exhibition, “Washington Color Painters.” The exhibits taking place at the gallery between 1961 to its closing in 1968 disseminated innovative and chaotic ideas. 

 

The gallery exhibited not only the art of several local painters, including Morris Louis, Howard Mehring and Ken Noland, but also the works of several New York artists, such as Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Stimulated by contacts with creative minds—and informed by the technical information they provided—John continued to explore various techniques, always making careful studies before completing his finished paintings.

 

In the 1970s, John chose to depict subjects from the natural world to express respect, even reverence for the earthy beauty of nature and its creatures. His use of found objects in many of his early works is reminiscent of Paul Klee and the art of the 1940s. But the delight that John derived from drawing and painting everyday objects persisted throughout his career. 

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