Roger Hull Research Files on Pacific Northwest Artists, 1882-2013

Helen Plummer was born in Alton, Illinois in 1861. Her father and her two sisters moved to Portland, Oregon in 1864. In 1885 she married Claude Gatch and the couple moved to Salem, where Claude was employed as a banker. Along with Salem resident Myra Albert Wiggins, Gatch was an important figure in pictorial photography. She was featured in several national publications and exhibitions over the course of her career. Gatch continued to volunteer at exhibitions after a 1912 move to Berkeley, California but did not pursue photography in the same way again.

Carl Hall studied with Carlos Lopez as a scholarship student at the Meinzinger Art School in Detroit. Hall began exhibiting his work widely in 1939 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many other museums and galleries. Hall first came to Oregon in 1942 to undergo basic training at Camp Adair. After serving in the Pacific during World War II, he settled permanently in Oregon and raised four children with his wife, Phyllis. Hall gained national recognition in 1948 when he was profiled in a Life magazine article titled, "Oregon Artist." He joined the faculty of Willamette University in 1947 where he taught art until his retirement in 1986. Hall died June 6, 1996.

Charles Edward Heaney (1897-1981) was born in 1897 to John and Elizabeth Heaney of Oconto Falls, Wisconsin--he was the youngest of eight children. Heaney's father died when he was six years old. In 1913, at the age of 15, Charles, moved west to Portland, Oregon with his mother and his sister. On arriving in Portland Heaney began operating box manufacturing machines for the F.C. Settler Company. Heaney began an apprenticeship with the Brandenburg Engraving Company as an engraver at the age of 18--developing skill that would later be shown in his etching. During this time he was encouraged by his employer, George O. Brandenburg, to attend courses at the Museum Art School (now the Pacific Northwest College of Art). Heaney began his studies in 1917 and continued them well into the 1920s. It was in 1929 that Heaney first gained notoriety as an artist during the First Annual Exhibition of Northwest Print Makers.

Heaney used his training as an artist working for the Oregon State Motor Association. For three years, beginning in 1929, it was his job to create and install directional road signs along Oregon highways. It was during these lengthy trips into the wilds of Eastern Oregon that Heaney would gather inspiration for many of his later paintings. His experiences with the Oregon State Motor Association translated into a position with the Works Progress Administration. Between 1937 and 1939 Heaney produced many paintings and prints for the WPA including,"The Mountain," a large painting created as a furnishing for Timberline Lodge.

Throughout his prolific 60 year career Heaney drew inspiration from the variety of experiences surrounding him including both natural and man-made environments. Though initially gaining recognition as a printmaker Heaney has established himself as one of the Northwest's premier painters by the 1950s.

Charles Heaney was diagnosed with cancer in 1980. He died in August, 1981.

Manuel Izquierdo was born September 26, 1925 north of Madrid, Spain. He was the eldest of three siblings. Izquierdo was 10 years old when the Spanish Civil War began in 1936. Due to the absence of both of his parents, Izquierdo, his brother José, and his sister Lucia were cared for by a children's refuge. In 1939, Izquierdo and his siblings were moved to Marseille, France in order to escape lingering tensions between Spanish Republicans and Pro-Franco groups.

In 1941 the Nazi occupation had begun to reach as far as the south of France. This prompted aid groups to arrange for the emigration of threatened children. In May of 1942, the three Izquierdo children set sail for New York City. Though it took one year for the children to find permanent residence, they were eventually placed with a family in Portland, Oregon. The Izquierdo and his two siblings made their cross country trip by train in 1943.

Manuel graduated high school in 1947 and enrolled that fall in the Museum Art School (Pacific Northwest College of Art). While at the Museum Art School Izquierdo focused on sculpture and printmaking. By 1951, he had finished his certificate program, and began teaching at the Museum Art School, attaining full time status by 1953. Izquierdo held his position at the Museum School for the next 46 years before retiring in 1997.

Over the course of his career Izquierdo came to be regarded as a distinguished sculptor, known for his welded sculptures. He died in 2009 at the age of 84.

George Johanson was born in Seattle, Washington in 1928 and moved to Portland, Oregon at the age of 17 to study art at the Museum Art School (now the Pacific Northwest College of Art). In the early 1950s Johanson spent time in New York studying print-making. Johanson returned to Portland, and began teaching at the Museum Art School in 1955. He remained on the faculty until his retirement in 1980.

Mark Sponenburgh was born in Cadillac, Michigan on June 15, 1916. After undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan in 1939, Sponenburgh was granted a scholarship at Cranbrook Academy to study sculpture. In early 1942, Sponenburgh volunteered for the U.S. Army and was assigned to Combat Intelligence Training; he later transferred to the Corps of Engineers.

Following the German surrender in 1945, Sponenburg was assigned to the art retrieval unit. He was tasked with recovering materials from the salt mine where the Nazis had hidden confiscated European art. In the spring of 1946, Sponenburgh joined the faculty of Architecture and Allied Arts at the University of Oregon to teach sculpture. In 1957, he assumed the role of Mayo Professor of Fine Art and Principle of the National College of Art in Lahore.

When he returned to Oregon in 1961, Sponenburgh was hired to help establish an art history program at Oregon State University. Sponenburgh held this position until 1983. In his later years Sponenburgh retired to Seal Rock--near Newport, Oregon. He died at the age of 96 in 2012.

Harry Widman was born in New Jersey in 1929 and moved to Eugene, Oregon at the age of 25 to pursue graduate work in art at the University of Oregon. After earning his Master of Fine Arts, Widman taught painting at the Museum Art School (now the Pacific Northwest College of Art) in Portland, Oregon. Along with many of his colleagues at the Museum Art School, he displayed a style strongly attuned to modernist aesthetics. Widman remained on the faculty for the following 35 years until his retirement in 1996. During this time he helped establish, and served as chair, of the Portland Art omission. Widman was diagnosed with Alzheimers Disease in 2005. Widman lived with this disease for 9 years. He died October 24, 2014.

Jan Zach was born in 1914 in the town of Slaný, Northwest of Prague. At the age of 15 he left home for Prague and soon began apprenticeships with several well known painters. Despite his skill in painting Zach was drawn toward civic sculpture and was greatly impressed by the work of Czech native Zdeněk Pešánek.

Zach was in New York City, decorating the Czech Pavilion for the 1939 World's Fair, when Nazi's invaded Czechoslovakia. He never returned to his home country. After briefly residing in New York City, Zach moved to Brazil where his drawings and paintings were exhibited at the National Museum of Fine Arts and the Institute of Brazilian Architects. In 1947 he married Canadian Judith Monk. Four years later the Zachs moved to her hometown of Victoria, British Columbia. Zach established an art school in Victoria and helped introduce contemporary art to the city's conservative scene.

In 1958 Zach was hired to teach sculpture at the University of Oregon in Eugene where he would teach for the next 21 years. Zach retired from the University of Oregon in 1979 at the age of 65.

At the time of his death, in 1986, Zach was working on several projects some of which were completed after his death by close friends.