[From the Community Collection, a public trust in Agincourt, Iowa]

MESS, George Joseph (1898–1962)

“Driftwood”

1930s

aquatint etching / 9 1/4 inches by 11 inches

George Jo Mess (as he preferred to be known) may have had the most diverse artistic education of anyone represented in the Community Collection: a manual training high school, the Herron Art School, Butler University, the Bauhaus in its Chicago guise, New York’s Columbia University and the Beaux Arts at Fontainebleau, France. He is identified primarily as a painter and prolific printmaker, such as this stark rendering of driftwood on a beach.

Documentation for this piece is sketchy, consisting primarily of a sticker on the back of its frame: Kroch’s & Brentano’s, 29 South Wabash, Chicago.