Putnam, born in Massachusetts, attended the department of fine arts at Harvard Art School, the Boston Museum School, the Boston Normal Art School and the Hartford School of Art, spending no more than a year at each. It is a record that suggests at the very least a temperament ready for the Modernist rebellion. And in fact, Putnam was only three years out of school when he was selected for the “Societe Anonyme International Exhibition” at the Brooklyn Museum (1926). It was the biggest avant-garde event since the Armory Show of 1913, and it was followed a decade later by one even bigger, the Museum of Modern Art’s “Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism.”
www.nytimes.com/1991/12/01/nyregion/art-wondering-about-putnam.html
Image Courtesy of Howard Goodman
