Kenneth Stubbs
(American artist, 1907-1967)

Kenneth Stubbs' years in Provincetown and his long association with the Provincetown art community are now memorialized with the establishment of a continuing fellowship in his name by his sister, Dorothy Stubbs Neyman, at the Fine Arts Work Center. The Kenneth Stubbs Endowed Fellowship is the first endowed Fellowship at the Center.

Born in Ochlocknee, Georgia in 1907, Kenneth Stubbs studied at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. and in Provincetown with E. Ambrose Webster, one of the country's pioneers in modern art. Stubbs taught painting and drawing at the Corcoran School and at George Washington University. An early proponent of modern art in the Washington community, he was founder and first president of the Corcoran Alumni Association and member of the Society of Washington Artists, the Artists Guild, and the Landscape Club. He was also a life member of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and of the Beachcombers. During his distinguished career as a free-lance script writer, he wrote, planned, and occasionally directed over 600 films.

From 1930 until his death in October 1967, Stubbs exhibited in the major Washington art shows, including the Corcoran Biennial, and had 10 one-man shows. He also exhibited in shows at the Provincetown Art Association. The Paul Kessler Gallery in Provincetown has had two memorial exhibitions of his work.

A master of a developed American cubist technique, Stubbs painted in oil and casein and did extensive pen drawing and watercolor. His interest in tradition, in form and content, and in modern art led him to a perfectly controlled painting style concerned with flat or semi-flat patterns, where bright colors and angular, faceted forms combine to give the full work a sense of action or motion.

Fine Arts Work Center Newsletter, Fall/Winter 1981