ALAN MAGEE Songs for All Hours
paintings • sculpture • music • films

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Born in 1947 in Newtown, Pennsylvania, Alan Magee attended art school in Philadelphia and, in 1969, began working as an editorial and book illustrator in New York. Among his regular clients were Time, Atlantic, Playboy, New York Magazine, The New York Times, and Simon & Schuster, Ballantine, Avon, and Bantam Books. During the 1970s Magee produced paintings for the covers of books by Graham Greene, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, John Irving, Henry Miller, Edward Abbey, Agatha Christie, Patrick White, Arkady and Boris Strugatski, and others.

 

His illustrations received numerous awards including an Americanl Book Award in 1982, Awards of Excellence from Communication Arts magazine and from the Society of Illustrators, Playboy magazine’s Annual Editorial Award, and awards from the Art Directors Clubs of Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. 

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In the late 1970s Magee began to concentrate on his personal paintings and in 1980 presented his first solo exhibition at Staempfli Gallery in New York. Since that time, he has had frequent one-person shows throughout the United States and Europe. In 1991 a ten-year survey, Alan Magee 1981-1991, traveled to four US museums. Archive, an exhibition of Magee’s black and white monotypes opened at the Berliner Philharmonie in November 2000 and traveled to the Portland Museum of Art. An Alan Magee Retrospective exhibition opened at the James A. Michener Art Museum in 2003; the Farnsworth Art Museum, 2004; and the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, in 2005.

 

Books of Alan Magee’s paintings include, Stones and Other Works, published by Harry N. Abrams in 1986, Alan Magee 1981-1991, published by the Farnsworth Art Museum in 1991, and Archive, Alan Magee Monotypes, published by Darkwood Press and Spectrum Concerts Berlin in 2000. Alan Magee: Paintings, Sculpture, Graphics was released in October 2003. Resistance, by Barry Lopez, with monotypes by Alan Magee, was published by Knopf in 2004. 

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Magee has received awards for his painting from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Academy of Design. Several documentary films have been made about his work including the Maine PBS production, Alan Magee, Visions of Darkness and Light, and Alan Magee, Maine Master by the Union of Maine Visual Artists.. A. feature documentary, Alan Magee: art is not a solace, by P. David Berez and David Wright, was released in 2019.

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Magee’s short films, based on his original songs, address social and political issues

 

The artist’s works can be seen in public collections including The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Art Institute of Chicago, The National Portrait Gallery, the US Capitol, the Portland Museum of Art, The Delaware Art Museum, the Farnsworth Art Museum, and the Columbus Museum of Art. 

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Alan Magee is represented by Forum Gallery in New York, and Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, Maine. His work may also be seen at alanmagee.com and www.vimeo.com/alanmagee