The founding and development of Skowhegan in 1946 is deeply connected to the explosive energy and elan that characterized post-war American culture. In the mid-1940s the art world was in ferment; what was to become known as the New York School was yet in its formative stages. Willard W. Cummings (1915-1975), a New England portrait painter, shared his vision for enriching and educating the practical art experience of young artists with a friend he met while in the Army War Art Unit, Sidney Simon (1917-1997). Along with Henry Varnum Poor (1888-1971), already an established presence in the American art scene, and Charles Cutler (1914-1970), a New England stone sculptor, these men founded an American summer art school that would ultimately achieve an enduring place in the development of American artists of all persuasions: the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. Though Cummings, Simon, Poor, and Cutler were committed practitioners of traditional artistic skills and saw these skills as forming the core of Skowhegan's original curriculum, their design of the program reveals a uniquely capacious vision. They did not intend Skowhegan to be a retreat into the countryside to simply nourish their own artistic philosophies and fend off change, but to be a place that would develop artists by offering an honest, supportive forum for divergent viewpoints.
Artist and Skowhegan Governor Bernarda Shahn (widow of artist Ben Shahn) was a member, with her husband, of the Skowhegan community from early on. In her 1976 essay The Skowhegan Idea she observed:
The distinction of this school rests upon its original conception which has remained its guiding policy throughout its existence. This has been the concept of an art school governed by artists. It was believed by the founders and it has certainly proved to be true—that artists themselves best understand the needs of the young developing artist, are best equipped to guide him toward his own goals and help him through those economic, emotional and aesthetic crises which are peculiar to the life of an artist and which will recur many times during his career. [The Faculty is chosen to] represent the living and changing world of art. It is not the objective here to ride every wave that arises in art nor to steer or guide the young artists toward any favored mode or style—a critical shortcoming the founders observed in the existing art schools and proliferating art departments in the late forties.”
From the start, Cummings, Cutler, Simon, and Poor intended Skowhegan to be a significant presence in the art world — an intention symbolized in the establishment of the year-round New York office. In their instinct that art always returns to reality as the one vital, original, and creative source, the founders seem to have zeroed in on a crucial element in the creative process itself, and the reality of the Skowhegan experience was soon validating itself in the accomplishments of the School's first alumni. As people like Alex Katz, Ellsworth Kelly, William King, Nancy Graves, and Janet Fish went on to establish names for themselves, Skowhegan's own reputation grew steadily more secure. Bill Cummings led the School through its formative years ensuring from the start that it welcomed a culturally and aesthetically diverse group of students.
Today Skowhegan has become a significant common ground among artists, international in its scope and remarkable in the way it has assumed a collaborative investment in the art world's future generations. As Calvin Tompkins wrote about the School, "Becoming an artist is a risky thing to do; being one is much riskier. Skowhegan seems to foster an attitude for risk-taking of all kinds, and this may well be its lasting contribution."
