Henri De Kruif Biography

Henri De Kruif

American

1882-1944

Biography

 

Henri Gilbert De Kruif, printmaker and painter, was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on 17 February 1882. He studied with John H. Vanderpoel at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago and with Frank DuMond and F. Luis Mora at the Art Students League in New York. In 1903 he studied at Hope College, a liberal arts college in Holland, Michigan, and he was employed at the Grand Rapids Advertising Company until 1907.

In 1911, De Kruif moved to Los Angeles, California where he was employed by Merril Advertising Company as a commercial artist. He studied with Stanton MacDonald-Wright and explored the idiom of modernism. De Kruif was a member of the Group of Eight, which included artists Mabel Alvarez, Clarence Hinkle, John Hubbard Rich, Donna Schuster, E. Roscoe Shrader, Edouard Vysekal, and Luvena Buchanan Vyseka. Exhibitions of the Group of Eight were sporadic but they did have an exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum in 1927.

De Kruif was also a member of and exhibited with the California Art Club, the California Print Makers, the California Society of Etchers, the Chicago Society of Etchers, the Laguna Beach Art Association, and the Los Angeles Art Association. His work is represented in the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium, Massachusetts; the Library of Congress; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Los Angeles Public Library; the San Diego Museum of Art; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Henri Gilbert De Kruif died in Los Angeles on 6 July 1944.