Earl Kerkam

Earl Cavis Kerkam (1891– 1965) was an American painter. According to Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Mark Rothko, George Spaventa and Esteban Vicente, he “was one of the finest painters to come out of America.” Gerald Norland wrote at the Earl Kerkam Memorial Exhibition in 1966: ”A painter of enormous poetic awareness, self-directed, almost totally without direct influence, he stands as an original American artist in the best sense.” Earl Kerkam painted and lived in Paris, France in the early 1950s. There, Kerkam developed a mentor and collegial relationship with the artist Norman Carton which extended through their returns to New York City, the 1955 Whitney Annual and Poindexter Gallery exhibition, and their solo exhibits at World House in the 1960s. Earl Kerkam died on January 12, 1965, in New York City.