Jon Gnagy Paintings

Click on Painting to Enlarge
Corn		Butterfly		Moon and Grapes		Anvil
BIOGRAPHY					KIT INFORMATION

As 1996 marks the 50th anniversary of Jon Gnagy's teaching debut on black and white television, it is important to remember that he was first of all a fine artist. These four delightful genre paintings, reproduced as note cards, recall his midwestern roots and commemorate his contribution to American culture. Jon Gnagy considered enthusiasm to be the most irresistible power on earth; it motivated his unique character and career. "Ignorant nerve plus enthusiasm got me from Kansas to New York in 1931," he liked to say. That same confidence and zest led him to develop innovative teaching and painting techniques and his own system of aesthetics and color theory. Then, in 1946, enthusiasm led him to a pioneering role in television, where in fourteen years and seven hundred live television shows, he persuasively taught the elementary principles of art to millions of unseen but devoted pupils. Many of those former fans, now professional artists, credit Jon Gnagy as their first art teacher. As a Kansas boy who discovered an exciting and wider world, Jon Gnagy enthusiastically lived with and painted mountains, desert, oceans, cities. Yet he frequently returned to his roots for subject and inspiration, using pastoral themes which reflect the simplicity and rich bounty of a Mennonite farm tradition. The blacksmith's anvil and hammer, emblematic of that heritage of honest toil and good craftsmanship, were significant to Jon Gnagy, who sometimes enjoyed describing himself as the "blacksmith of American art."