Ilya Bolotowsky

Ilya Bolotowsky was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists. A Russian immigrant to New York in 1923, Bolotowsky studied at the National Academy of Design between 1924 and 1930. He then worked for several years as a textile designer and taught art in settlement houses. By 1932, he had saved enough money so that, combined with a small scholarship, he was able to spend ten months in Europe- primarily Italy, Germany, Denmark, and England, with a few weeks in Paris.

In 1934, he worked for the Public Works of Art Project, a pilot program of federal support that paved the way for the WPA-FAP in 1935. When Gertrude Greene mentioned that Burgoyne Diller was heading up a WPA mural project that would use abstract artists, Bolotowsky submitted sketches. Diller arranged Bolotowsky's transfer from the WPA teaching project, and Bolotowsky set to work on a mural design for the Williamsburg housing project, whose architect, William Lescaze, was sympathetic to abstraction.

In his abstract compositions of the mid 1930s, Bolotowsky gave free rein to a variety of stylistic approaches. He encountered the work of both Miró and Mondrian in 1933, and by 1936 introduced a Mondrianesque grid pattern as the framework for playful biomorphic forms and rectangular planes of unmodulated color.

During World War II, Bolotowsky served in the Army Air Corps. After his discharge, he replaced Joseph Albers for two years at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. From 1948 to 1957, he taught at the University of Wyoming and at Brooklyn College. From 1957 to 1965, he was Professor of Art at State Teacher's College in New Paltz, New York, and from 1965 until 1971, he taught at the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater. At various times, he also held short-term or adjunct positions at Hunter College in New York, the University of New Mexico, and Queens College.

Before the war, Bolotowsky had exhibited in a variety of group exhibitions, including the Museum of Modern Art's New Horizons in American Art in 1936 and in both the second and third annual shows of The Ten, in 1936 and 1937. In 1946, after his return, his paintings began to receive wide attention. He had solo exhibitions at J.B. Neumann's New Art Circle and at The Pinacotheca gallery. In 1954, he joined Grace Borgenicht's gallery, where he showed biennially into the 1970s.