Harry Holtzman

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harry Holtzman (* 8. June 1912 in New York ; † 25. September 1987 in Lyme , Connecticut ) was an American painter of abstract art , co-founder of the artists' association American Abstract Artists and a close friend, heritage and editor of the art theoretical writings of Piet Mondrian .

Live and act

Holtzmann showed an interest in contemporary art at the age of fourteen. Encouraged by his high school teacher, he visited the International Exhibition of Modern Art in the Brooklyn Museum in 1926 , where he studied the works of leading European and American artists, including Max Ernst , Wassily Kandinsky , but also Man Ray and Georgia O'Keeffe , made familiar.

From 1928 to 1933 he attended the Art Students League , participated in the self-administration of the association and published its quarterly magazine. Thanks to his commitment, the German artists George Grosz and Hans Hofmann could be won as teachers. He attended the anatomy class with George Bridgman , then with his friend, the artist Burgoyne Diller from autumn 1932 Hofmann's class, whose assistant he became. When Hofmann founded his own art school, Holtzman was a teacher there until 1935.

On Diller Council visited Holtzmann with him in January 1934, the exhibition of the New York art collector Albert Gallatin in the Museum of Living Art and was immediately impressed by Mondrian's work. In December of the same year, at the age of 22, he traveled to Paris to visit the older artist in his studio at 26 rue du Depart (near Gare Montparnasse) and to discuss his theories and working methods with him. A close friendship developed from this. Holtzman stayed in Paris for four months and finally met Jean Hélion , who inspired him to found an association of American abstract artists on his return. From 1936 to 1937 he worked in the wall painting department of the Federal Art Project (FAP), of which Diller was director. In 1936 Holtzman co-founded the American Abstract Artists association , of which Piet Mondrian was a member. Shortly after the outbreak of World War II , he supported Mondrian's emigration from London to New York in 1940 and contributed to his maintenance there.

Mondrian died of pneumonia in 1944, Holtzman was his sole heir. After his death, Holtzman opened his friend's studio at 15 East 59th Street in New York for six weeks in order to make it accessible to friends and people interested in his art. He and his friend Fritz Glarner also photographed the studio in black and white as well as in color and passed it on to posterity as the work of art The Wall Works .

After the war, Holtzman became a member of the Institute for General Semantics in 1947, where he taught with Alfred Korzybski until 1954. He later edited the journal Trans / Formation: Arts, Communications, Environment . For many years he participated in the conferences of the National Committee on Art Education hosted by the Museum of Modern Art . From 1950 to 1975 he was a member of the art department at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York . In 1986 he published the collected writings of Piet Mondrian under the title The New Art - the New Life: The Collected Writings of Piet Mondrian .

Holtzman lived and worked in Lyme, Connecticut. He was married to Elizabeth McManus Holtzman; his children are the architect Jason Holtzman and the two daughters Jackie and Madalena.

The Harry Holtzman Papers, in the form of letters, photographs, films and other documents relating primarily to Mondrian's work, are kept in the beincke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

literature

  • The New Art - the New Life: The Collected Writings of Piet Mondrian , 1986. New edition, edited and translated by Harry Holtzman and Martin S. James, Da Capo Press, New York 1993, ISBN 0-306-80508-1
  • John R. Lane, Susan C. Larsen: Abstract painting and sculpture in America, 1927-1944 , Carnegie Institute. Museum of Art, 1984 pp. 29, 175, 179

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brooklyn Museum Press release
  2. ↑ Marian Cloug: Beyond the plane: American constructions, 1930-1965 , New Jersey State Museum, 1983, p 55
  3. ↑ Willy Rotzler: Constructive Concepts: A History of Constructive Art from Cubism to Today , ABC Verlag, 1977, p. 228
  4. ↑ Quoted from the Harry Holtzman website
  5. ^ Exhibition Mondrian / De Stijl ( Memento from January 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), www.centrepompidou.fr accessed on January 31, 2012
  6. ↑ Mondrian , www.moma.org, accessed 31 January 2012
  7. ↑ Quoted from the English Wikipedia Harry Holtzman , in: Website Harry Holtzman
  8. ↑ Harry Holtzman Papers , drs.library.yale.edu, accessed 1 February 2012
personal data
SURNAME Holtzman, Harry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH new York
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 1987
Place of death Lyme , Connecticut