Midcentury Modern House
Oil on canvas
1500cm x 1000cm
This picture is so big, I could barely get the canvas in my car, nor on my easel! It shows a ‘Midcentury Modern’ house designed by Donald Wexler in Palm Springs. The excerpt below is from a website which actually features a photograph of this particular house:
Spotlight: Greater Palm Springs
WEXLER STEEL HOUSES7 homes herald the breakthrough concept of prefab design
Modernist architect Donald Wexler believed that steel was ideal for desert building—it was economical and stood tough against sun, heat, and wind. In 1961, he planned an entire Palm Springs subdivision of nearly 40 homes, all to be made out of prefab steel and glass. Wexler got the idea from prefab classroom design, adapting it to create his stylish yet affordable homes (original price tags in 1962: $13,000 to $17,000).Even with his visionary design skills, Wexler couldn’t foresee the future—and the skyrocketing price of steel. Deemed too costly, the development was never completed, and the seven original homes were largely forgotten. Fortunately for design fans, Wexler’s prefab groundbreakers were rediscovered in the early 1990s, and most of the buildings have been carefully restored, complete with era-appropriate landscaping. Respectfully admire the private homes, in the Racquet Club Estates neighborhood, from the outside only (no public tours of the interiors are available).
The painting barely fitting in my studio; and hanging over a five-foot wide bed:
