ITHACA REGAINED

GREEK ARTISTS IN NEW YORK

Thomas Chimes

Momo, 1965
Inkwash on paper, 8.5 x 5.5 inches

Thomas Chimes was born in Philadelphia in 1921. As the eldest son of Greek immigrants, he grew up in West Philadelphia, and from an early age displayed an aptitude for art -- nurtured by his teachers at the Mastbaum School of Art, and discouraged by his father, who dismissed a career in the arts as fanciful delusion. Disagreeing with his father, Chimes enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but his studies were interrupted by the onset of America’s involvement in World War II.

After serving in the Air Force, Chimes enrolled at the Art Students League of New York as well as Columbia University, studying art and philosophy, respectively. In 1953, however, Chimes made a conscious decision to return to Philadelphia, much to the bewilderment of many of his friends and colleagues in New York. Inspired by the artists and writers whose names have become associated with the city of Philadelphia, most notably Thomas Eakins and Edgar Allan Poe, Chimes began to formulate an intensely personal and highly original iconography that often drew upon childhood memories and dreams.

Today, Chimes is considered among the most important artists to emerge from Philadelphia in the Post War era. In a career spanning five decades, Chimes has explored symbols such as the crucifix, mythology, architectural concepts, nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary figures and painters, and landscape symbolism, all of which encompass a mature and unique aesthetic sensibility.