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| Allie Tennant's 1929 portrait bust of artist Frank Klepper |
This blog deals with life of Allie Tennant as presented in the book "Allie Victoria Tennant and the Visual Arts in Dallas" published in 2015 by the Texas A&M University Press. Tennant was a Dallas sculptor who lived from 1892 until 1971. She was an accomplished artist who belonged to the Regionalist school of artistic expression. Tennant was also active as a promoter of the visual arts in the city. This volume is the first biography ever written about her.
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Frank Klepper and Allie Tennant
Allie Tennant and Frank Klepper were professional colleagues and friends for almost fifty years. Frank Klepper (1890-1952) was a McKinney, Texas native who spent most of his life as an artist in Dallas. He also taught studio classes during the early 1930s at the Kidd-Key College in Sherman. He founded the Frank Klepper Art Club that still meets today in Dallas. Klepper taught a considerable number of private art students from the 1920s until the 1950s. Some of them, including the etcher James Swann,
became artists of considerable reputation. Tennant and Klepper taught together at the Dallas Art Institute and in the evening division of the Dallas Independent School District's continuing education program. In 1929 Tennant executed a bronze bust of her friend Frank Klepper. Exhibited in the State Fair Art Show of that year, this prize winning piece now resides in the collection of the Heard-Craig Center for the Arts in McKinney. Click here to read about Klepper in the Handbook of Texas.
