La cabaña de las dunas de los artistas Jan Gelb y Boris Margo

Boris Margo (1902 — 1995) 

Boris Margo was an Ukranian artist. He attended The Polytechnic of Art in Odessa. In 1930, he immigrated to The United States. Margo excelled in printmaking, painting and wood sculpture. He experimented on unique materials and methods. He had a spontaneous approach which was similar to those of a Surrealist.

A simple sign of tin and shingle remembers the shack's original owners.

(Jeannette de Beauvoir)

Kerosene lamps extend the day, but artists find themselves rising and going to sleep with the sun.

(Jeannette de Beauvoir) 

The Margo-Gelb house was built in the 1940's by Russian artist Boris Margo for his poet wife, Janet Gelb. 

(Jeannette de Beauvoir)

Kerosene lamps and natural sunlight are the only sources of light for artists who live and work in the shacks. 

(Jeannette de Beauvoir) 

The only source of water for the dune shacks is a hand-drawn well at the bottom of the hill. The artist began every day of her stay at the Margo-Gelb house by trekking six gallons of water back to the shack. 

(Jeannette de Beauvoir) 

Sunset from the Margo-Gelb house, one of 19 dune shacks in the Province Lands. 

(Jeannette de Beauvoir)

Jan Gelb. Artist Biography:

New York educator, painter,printmaker Jan Gelb (1906–1978) worked at the MacDowell Colony from 1955–1957,and again in 1972. Early in her career, she studied art at the Yale University School of the Fine Arts in Boston and the Art Students League in New YorkCity. Her work was featured in 1958 in the Whitney Museum of Art exhibition Nature in Abstraction.

Jan Gelb was born in 1906 in New York City and by age 22 she had distinguished herself by being the first woman to graduate with honors from theYale University Fine Arts program. After Yale, she moved back to New York City where she continued to study at the Art Students League and in 1936 came to Provincetown for the first time.
She returned every year from that time onwards and in 1940 brought Boris Margo up from New York with her, toset up home in a shack lent by Hazel Hawthorne. Eventually the couple lived inisolation on the dunes in a shack that Boris built on the site of the old Coast Guard station, where O'Neill once lived. Their front yard was simply the beach and for Jan Gelb, it was, for all the time she knew it, a tremendous inspiration. From the artist archives of The Provincetown Art Association & Museum. Museums: Metropolitain Museum, Whitney Museum, Indiana Museum of Art.
(http://www.brownshaver.com/apps/webstore/products/show/2654109)

Boris Margo. Artist Biography: 

Born in Wolotschick Ukraine in 1902, Boris Margo grew up in a middle class family with four other siblings. He became interested in painting at an early age, but revolutionary movements in Russia made materials scarce. 

In 1918, Margo received a scholarship to study at the Polytechnik Art School in Odessa, where he encountered formal training and figure drawing for the first time. When he executed a stylized drawing of a nude, the young artist was reprimanded by his instructor. Nevertheless, this event revealed his creative tendencies. Margo participated in Futemus constructivist workshop in Moscow before moving to Leningrad in 1927 to study under Pavel Filinov (1888-1943). Filonov taught a curriculum based on creative expression and surrealist tendencies, which engaged Margo in applying more automatic thinking to his work. 

Margo graduated from the Polytechnik in 1928 and moved to Montreal Canada after receiving a government permit to study abroad. Previous experience as a mural painter in Montreal eventually led to his employment as an assistant to Arshile Gorky (1904-1944) in New York City. During this same period, Margo began to study at the Roerich Museum of Art, where he later became an instructor. 

During the Great Depression, Margo was forced to work with supplies he either made or found. Through this experince, the artist developed the cellocut as well as decalcomania. The cellotype is a printmaking process by which plastic is melted with acetate and then poured onto a backing such as cardboard. Once the plastic is hardened it can be worked by various tools into either a relief or intaglio plate. Decalcomania is a transfer process, which allows the artist to transfer printmaking images onto canvas or other surfaces. 

In 1939 Margo held his first one-man exhibition at the Artists Gallery in New York City. Shortly after, the artist traveled to the coastal city of Provincetown, MA with printmaker and his soon-to-be wife, Jan Gelb (1906-1978). After becoming inspired by the various elements they found along the local beach, the couple made it a tradition to spend their summers in the area. 

Margo pioneered several new methods that have left a lasting impression on printmaking. The Metropolitan Museum acknowledged his work by purchasing his cellocut, Floating Objects Illuminated, 1942. Margo also taught at numerous Institutes and Universities around the country including the Art Institute of Chicago. He continued to exhibit his work until his death in 1995 at the age of 93. 

(http://www.sullivangoss.com/Boris_Margo/#Works for sale by this artist)

http://www.artfact.com/artist/gelb-jan-x6pobbu73l

http://www.all-art.org/art_20th_century/margo1.html

http://www.brownshaver.com/apps/webstore/products/show/2654109 

http://www.iocapecod.com/lifestyle/the_dune_shack_experience/gallery/1