Lot 53
Abraham Walkowitz
New York / Russian Federation, (1878-1965)
untitled park scene, 1904
watercolor and pencil on paper
signed and dated lower center.
Biography from the Archives of askART: The following is by Dr. Theodore W. Eversole:
Abraham Walkowitz (1878-1965 ) is perhaps best known for his watercolor studies of Isadora Duncan and the dance. However, Walkowitz laid claim to being the first to exhibit truly Modernist paintings in the United States. After 1909, he became an intimate of Alfred Stieglitz' 291 Gallery, and whilst there became a participant in the debate over Modern Art in America. Walkowitz was an outspoken proponent of the continuous experimentation in the arts, which was his definition of Modernism. As an artist, Walkowitz embodied the changing role of the Modernist painter in the United States, as Modernism moved from avant-garde protest against established modes to become an accepted style and tradition.
Abraham Walkowitz, was a Russian born, turn-of-the century immigrant to the United States, who grew up in New York's Lower East Side. He first studied art at the Educational Alliance, the Cooper Union, and the National Academy of Design. In 1906, he journeyed to Europe where he studied at the Academie Julian in Paris. Upon his return to the United States in 1907, he became a fully-fledged convert to Modernism, and his first exhibit, at the Haas Gallery in that year, brought him a measure of notoriety as well as the attention of Stieglitz and other pioneers of Non-Objective art.
In subsequent years, he became one of the most exhibited painters shown at the 291 Gallery, a fact which was also reflected in the pages of Stieglitz' polemical journal of Modernism, Camera Work.
As a result of this early attention, by the time of the Armory Show of 1913 to which Walkowitz contributed several paintings, his work was widely known to both fellow Modernists as well as their opponents. Walkowitz was clearly part of the new vocabulary of American art and criticism.
During the 1920s and 1930s, as the first generation Modernists lost their revolutionary cast, and as American Realism gained in favor, Walkowitz continued his experiments with form and line, especially in his series of Duncan studies. Although his paintings received less critical attention than they once had, Walkowitz was clearly one of the grand old folk of American Modernism. During the Depression, Walkowitz was politically active on behalf of unemployed artists supporting various New Deal initiatives in the Arts.
In the 1940s Walkowitz gained national attention when he explored the varieties of the Modernist vision in the form of an exhibit of 100 portraits of Walkowitz by 100 artists. The result was widely discussed and was featured in Life Magazine in 1944.
In 1945, Walkowitz travelled to Kansas where he painted landscapes made up largely of strip mines and barns. This was to be his last venture in active painting for, by 1946, the glaucoma which was to lead to his eventual blindness began to impair his vision and limit his ability to work. Walkowitz then turned to the preparation of a series of volumes of his drawings, designed to illustrate the development of Modernism in the Twentieth Century, and in so doing, established his role as a pioneer American Modernist.
About Primary Sources from Dr. Eversole:
The Archives of American Art, Washington Center, 8th and F Streets, Washington, D.C. 20560, has been a most helpful depository for research materials in the field of modern American Art. Besides maintaining the Abraham Walkowitz papers, the Archives also freely lent to the author a variety of other collateral source material such as: the Max Weber papers, the Whitney Museum files, the Downtown Gallery Papers, and a complete transcript of the December 1958 Interview with Abraham Walkowitz conducted by Abram Lerner and Bartlett Cowdrey in New York.
Another center for Walkowitz source material was the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Here was preserved the Alfred Stieglitz Archive, which contained the StieglitzWalkowitz correspondence, in addition to the Carl Van Vechten Abraham Walkowitz correspondence. Both Donald Gallup, one time Curator of the Collection of American Literature, and Miss Georgia O'Keeffe deserved special thanks for allowing me to have access to this material. The Abraham Walkowitz artist's file at the New York City Public Library also contained useful information.
However, one of the most intriguing aspects of this study was the author's chance to create his own file of primary materials on Walkowitz. This includes correspondence and recollections from artists, friends, family, gallery associates and others. In other words, a file was created of all those Walkowitz acquaintances who answered my research inquiries. This research file is now part of the Theodore W. Eversole Collection at the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Also of importance was the collection of assorted taped oral interviews with some especially knowledgeable people; this was clearly the case with the interviews with Dr. Rosa Prigosen, Walkowitz' niece and benefactor, and Ms. Virginia Zabriskie, of the Zabriskie Gallery, The Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, New York, New York, who remains a major handler of Walkowitz' work. Further, Virginia Zabriskie established, in 1993, a significant archive for Walkowitz study at the University Gallery, University of Delaware, through a gift of over 1500 drawings and objects, including 400 drawings of Isadora Duncan.
- Dimensions: 5 5/8" x 7 5/8", 11 3/4" x 14 1/2" (frame)
- Medium: watercolor and pencil on paper
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