Edgar Yaeger

Edgar Yaegar (American, 1904-1997) collection available at the Michigan Art Gallery.

Born in Detroit in 1904, Yaegar attended both Robert Herzog's Detroit School of Fine and Applied Art and the John P. Wicker School of Fine Arts. He won the Founders Society Purchase Prize in 1932 and in that same year became the seventh Wicker Student to win the Anna Scipps Whitcomb Traveling Scholarship awarded by the Detroit News. He subsequently studied in Paris with Andre Lhote, Marcel Gromaire, and Othon Friesz at the Academie Ranson. Returning to Detroit in 1935, Yaeger joined joined the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project and completed murals for the Brodhead Naval Armory and the Public Lighting Commission Building in Detroit. He eventually executed murals for Grosse Pointe City Hall, Grosse Pointe South High School, the Children's Hospital of Detroit (later demolished), the Ford School in Highland Park, and the Men's Union Dormitory at the University of Michigan. Yaeger was one of the founders of the Grosse Pointe Artists Association and taught for many years at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial. He was also active as a stage designer for the Wayne State University Theater Guild and the Detroit Symphony. One of the earliest abstract artists in Michigan, Yeager was influenced by both Picasso and the Italian forerunner of Surrealism, Giorgio de Chirico. His paintings are notable for their pure, flat color, stylized human figures, and decorative sense of pattern. Although he painted typically Cubist still lifes, Yaeger was also well known for his fantasy landscapes, characterized by solitary figures, empty spaces, and dream-like quality.