Albert Kotin (August 7, 1907 – February 6, 1980) belonged to the early generation of New York School
Abstract Expressionist
Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...
artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized across the Atlantic, including in Paris. The New York SchoolAbstract Expressionism, represented by
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...
,
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning (; ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter El ...
,
Franz Kline
Franz Kline (May 23, 1910 – May 13, 1962) was an American painter. He is associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s. Kline, along with other action painters like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Mot ...
, and others became a leading
art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defi ...
of the post-World War II era.
Biography
Albert Kotin was born August 7, 1907, in
Minsk
Minsk ( be, Мінск ; russian: Минск) is the capital and the largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach and the now subterranean Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the admi ...
,
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
and emigrated to the US in 1908. He became a US citizen in 1923.
Kotin studied: (1924–1929) at the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...
, New York City; with
Charles Hawthorne
Charles Webster Hawthorne (January 8, 1872 – November 29, 1930) was an American portrait and genre painter and a noted teacher who founded the Cape Cod School of Art in 1899.
He was born in Lodi, Illinois, and his parents returned to Main ...
,
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Province ...
Académie de la Grande Chaumière
The Académie de la Grande Chaumière is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France.
History
The school was founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, near the Acad ...
Federal Art Project
The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administrati ...
:
Public Works of Art Project
The Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) was a New Deal program designed to employ artists that operated from 1933 to 1934. The program was headed by Edward Bruce, under the United States Treasury Department with funding from the Civil Works Admin ...
(PWAP) (1933–34) and
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
/
Federal Art Project
The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administrati ...
(WPA/FAP) (1935–40).
Kotin won competitions that were funded through commissions under the Treasury Department's
Section of Painting and Sculpture
The Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture was a New Deal art project established on October 16, 1934, and administered by the Procurement Division of the United States Department of the Treasury.
Commonly known as the Section, it was rena ...
(later known as The Section of Fine Arts) in
Ada, Ohio
Ada ; ; is a village in Hardin County, Ohio, United States, located about southwest of Toledo. The population was 5,952 at the 2010 census.
History
Following the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs, the Shawnee Indians held reservation land at Hog Cre ...
, and in
Arlington, New Jersey
Arlington is a neighborhood in Kearny in the western part of Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. Kearny Riverbank Park runs along the neighborhood's Passaic River shore. Arlington Memorial Park cemetery is located on Schuyler Avenue.
The ...
. He completed two WPA murals, ''The City'' and ''The Marsh'' for the Kearney, New Jersey, post office in 1938.
Kotin served in the
U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
military service during World War II (1941–1945).
After the war Kotin found a studio on 10th Street. He soon joined the "Downtown Group" which represented a group of artists who found studios in lower Manhattan in the area bounded by 8th and 12th street between First and Sixth Avenues during the late 1940s and early 1950s. These artists were called the "Downtown Group" as opposed to the "Uptown Group" established during the war at The Art of This Century Gallery.
In 1949 Kotin joined the "Artists' Club" located at 39 East 8th Street.
Albert Kotin was chosen by his fellow artists to show in the
Ninth Street Show
The 9th Street Art Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture is the official title artist Franz Kline hand-lettered onto the poster he designed for the Ninth Street Show (May 21-June 10, 1951).
held on May 21 – June 10, 1951.
The show was located at 60 East 9th Street on the first floor and the basement of a building which was about to be demolished.
"The artists celebrated not only the appearance of the dealers, collectors and museum people on the 9th Street, and the consequent exposure of their work but they celebrated the creation and the strength of a living community of significant dimensions."
Kotin participated in all the invitational New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals. The first annual in 1951 was called the
Ninth Street Show
The 9th Street Art Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture is the official title artist Franz Kline hand-lettered onto the poster he designed for the Ninth Street Show (May 21-June 10, 1951).
. From 1953 to 1957 the invitational New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals were held in the
Stable Gallery
The Stable Gallery, originally located on West 58th Street in New York City, was founded in 1953 by Eleanor Ward. The Stable Gallery hosted early solo New York exhibitions for artists including Marisol Escobar, Robert Indiana and Andy Warhol.
His ...
on West 58th Street in New York City. He was among the 24 out of a total 256 New York School artists who was included in all the Annuals. These Annuals were important because the participants were chosen by the artists themselves.
Harold Rosenberg
Harold Rosenberg (February 2, 1906 – July 11, 1978) was an American writer, educator, philosopher and art critic. He coined the term Action Painting in 1952 for what was later to be known as abstract expressionism. Rosenberg is best known for ...
, New York art critic listed Albert Kotin among the "Tenth Street Artists: Individuals Prevail over the Group:" Kotin was exhibited by the
Anita Shapolsky Gallery
The Anita Shapolsky Gallery is an art gallery that was founded in 1982 by Anita Shapolsky. It is currently located at 152 East 65th Street, on Manhattan's Upper East Side, in New York City.
The gallery specializes in 1950s and 1960s abstract e ...
in New York City, McCormick Gallery, and Robert Miller Gallery-New York.
Kotin was also a poet who inspired his fellow artists.
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and hi ...
wrote in 1968, "As long as there are people such as Al Kotin, there is no danger to art."From a monograph by
Mathias Goeritz
Werner Mathias Goeritz Brunner (4 April 1915, Danzig, German Empire – 4 August 1990, Mexico City) was a Mexican painter and sculptor of German origin. After spending much of the 1940s in North Africa and Spain, he and his wife, photographer ...
: "
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and hi ...
", 1968 Private Collection
Kotin died on February 6, 1980, in New York City from lung cancer.
Selected solo exhibitions
* 1951: (first) Hacker Gallery, New York City;
*1958: Grand Central Moderns Gallery, New York City;
*1959: Tanager Gallery, New York City;
*1960: Galerie Iris Clert, Paris, France; Pollock Gallery, Toronto, Canada;
*1961: Mili-Jay Gallery,
Woodstock, New York
Woodstock is a town in Ulster County, New York, United States, in the northern part of the county, northwest of Kingston, NY. It lies within the borders of the Catskill Park. The population was 5,884 at the 2010 census, down from 6,241 in 20 ...
Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
; "Kotin and Carton", Art Faculty two man show, Long Island University, Brooklyn;
*1982: "Albert Kotin, 1907–1980", Memorial Exhibition, Barron Arts Center,
Woodbridge, New Jersey
Woodbridge Township is a township in Middlesex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The township is both a regional hub for Central New Jersey and a major bedroom suburb of New York City in the New York metropolitan area located within the ...
.
Selected group exhibitions
*1935: "Exhibition of Oil Paintings", WPA Federal Art Project, Federal Art Gallery, New York City;
*1936: An American Group, Inc., New York City;
*1946: "First National Print Competition Exhibit", Associated American Artists, New York City;
*1947: "J & E.R. Pennell Exhibition of Prints",
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...
,
Washington, D.C.
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
;
*1948: "46th Annual Exhibition", The
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
,
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
;
*1949: "8 & 2 Exhibition"
The New School for Social Research
The New School for Social Research (NSSR) is a graduate-level educational institution that is one of the divisions of The New School in New York City, United States. The university was founded in 1919 as a home for progressive era thinkers. NSS ...
, New York City;
*1951: ‘’’
Ninth Street Show
The 9th Street Art Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture is the official title artist Franz Kline hand-lettered onto the poster he designed for the Ninth Street Show (May 21-June 10, 1951).
’’’, the first "New York Painting and Sculpture Annual", New York City;
*1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957: "New York Painting and Sculpture Annual",
Stable Gallery
The Stable Gallery, originally located on West 58th Street in New York City, was founded in 1953 by Eleanor Ward. The Stable Gallery hosted early solo New York exhibitions for artists including Marisol Escobar, Robert Indiana and Andy Warhol.
His ...
, New York City;
*1956: "Painters and Sculptors on 10th Street", Tanager Gallery, New York City;
*1957: "First Spring Annual Exhibition", March Gallery, New York City;
*1958: "A to Z in American Arts", Provincetown Arts Festival, M. Knoedler & Co., New York City; Camino Gallery, New York City;
*1959: "10th Street",
Contemporary Arts Museum
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is a not-for-profit institution in the Museum District, Houston, Texas, founded in 1948,
dedicated to presenting contemporary art to the public.
As a non-collecting museum, it strives to provide a forum for visual ...
, Houston, Texas;
*1960: "New York Artists: A Drawing Show",
Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University is a system of public universities in the southern region of the U.S. state of Illinois. Its headquarters is in Carbondale, Illinois.
Board of trustees
The university is governed by the nine member SIU Board of Tr ...
Woodstock, New York
Woodstock is a town in Ulster County, New York, United States, in the northern part of the county, northwest of Kingston, NY. It lies within the borders of the Catskill Park. The population was 5,884 at the 2010 census, down from 6,241 in 20 ...
;
*1961: Allyn Gallery,
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
;
*1963: "Multiples", Graham Gallery, New York City, New York; Key Gallery, New York City;
*1963–64: "Hans Hofmann and His Students", circ. by the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, New York City;
*1963, 1964: Aegis Gallery, New York City;
*1965: "79 painters who paint", held simultaneously in: Grace Borgenicht, Graham, Martha Jackson, Kornblee and Poindexter Galleries, New York City;
*1966: "New York '66", College Museum,
Hampton Institute
Hampton University is a private, historically black, research university in Hampton, Virginia. Founded in 1868 as Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School, it was established by Black and White leaders of the American Missionary Association aft ...
, Hampton, Virginia;
*1971: Roko Gallery, New York City;
*1994: "Reclaiming Artists of the New York School. Toward a More Inclusive View of the 1950s",
Baruch College
Baruch College (officially the Bernard M. Baruch College) is a public college in New York City. It is a constituent college of the City University of New York system. Named for financier and statesman Bernard M. Baruch, the college operates unde ...
City University, New York City; "New York-Provincetown: A 50s Connection",
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
The Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) is located at 460 Commercial Street in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and is the most attended art museum on Cape Cod. The museum's permanent coll ...
,
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Province ...
;
*2004: "Reuniting an Era Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s.", Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, Illinois.
See also
*
Art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defi ...
*
Ninth Street Show
The 9th Street Art Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture is the official title artist Franz Kline hand-lettered onto the poster he designed for the Ninth Street Show (May 21-June 10, 1951).
Action painting
Action painting, sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical a ...
Contemporary Arts Museum
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is a not-for-profit institution in the Museum District, Houston, Texas, founded in 1948,
dedicated to presenting contemporary art to the public.
As a non-collecting museum, it strives to provide a forum for visual ...
Houston, Texas October 15 – November 8, 1959
*''Albert Kotin'' Byron Gallery, Inc. New York City, April 7–25, 1964
*''Albert Kotin 1907–1980 Memorial Exhibition'' Long Island University, The Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn, New York. October 6–29, 1982
*''Albert Kotin Retrospective: Paintings, Drawings, Prints'' Artfull Eye Exhibition Gallery,
Lambertville, New Jersey
Lambertville is a city in Hunterdon County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's population was 3,906,Mishkin Gallery ''Reclaiming Artists of the New York School Toward a More Inclusive view of the 1950s''
Baruch College
Baruch College (officially the Bernard M. Baruch College) is a public college in New York City. It is a constituent college of the City University of New York system. Named for financier and statesman Bernard M. Baruch, the college operates unde ...
CUNY March 18 – April 22, 1994
* Provicetown Art Association ''Hans Hofmann, New York-Provincetown: A 50s Connection'' Provincetown Art Association and Museum,
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Province ...
July 8 – August 1, 1994
* Rockford Art Museum ''Reuniting an Era abstract expressionists of the 1950s'' Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, Illinois November 12, 2004 – January 25, 2005