Cameron Booth (1892-1980)

Cameron Booth was born in Erie Pennsylvania.  His first five years as a student at the School of the Art Instute of Chicago (1912-1917) provided Booth with an academic technical background, as well as an introduction to contemporary European art.

World War I took him to France where he met leading French painters like Roualt, Leger, and Van Dongen.  Here, Cameron Booth increased his knowledge of Cubism and advanced the structural interests to which he had been introduced through his study of the Italian primitives and Cezannes's work.

In 1921 Cameron Booth accepted a position teaching at the Minneapolis School of Art.  His early Minnesota paintings of this period suggest a classical Renaissance composition, reinterpreted through Cubism and architectural realism.  Booth continued to seek to apply the abstract principles of organization to recognizable subject matter.  Ther alteration can be seen in his nature studies.

In 1927 Cameron Booth studied in Europe with Hans Hofmann, where he absorbed the principles of abstraction.  Booth received a Guggenheim Fellowship to travel and paint throughout the West in 1942.  By 1946, Booth had begun to formulate an abstract style embodying totem-like figures, inspired by his studies of primitive art.

His work is represented in collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Museum of Modern Art, NY, and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, as well as many other museums and private collections.