Dora Deborah Kaminsky (1909–1977) was an American artist.

Early life and education

Dora Deborah Kaminsky was born in New York City in 1909. As a child, she attended

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, followed by the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

. She proceeded to study in Europe in the 1930s, including in

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, Paris,

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

, and

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

. She made money as an artists' model.

Mid-life

Kaminsky worked at the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

for three years as part of the teaching staff. In 1943 she was one of the charter members who organized the

National Serigraph Society The National Serigraph Society was founded in 1940 by a group of artists involved in the WPA Federal Art Project, including Anthony Velonis, Max Arthur Cohn, and Hyman Warsager. The creation of the society coincided with the rise of serigraphs bei ...

and remained a member for 13 years. Kaminsky first visited

Taos, New Mexico Taos is a town in Taos County in the north-central region of New Mexico in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Initially founded in 1615, it was intermittently occupied until its formal establishment in 1795 by Nuevo México Governor Fernando Cha ...

in 1944, spending every other summer before settling there in 1954. She also had a home in Delphi, Greece. She worked in Hawaii for a brief period. Kaminsky was included in the 1947 and 1951

Dallas Museum of Fine Arts The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the A ...

exhibitions of the National Serigraph Society. In 1958 Kaminsky married fellow Taos artist

Leon Gaspard Leon Schulman Gaspard (2 March 1882 - 21 February 1964) was a Russian Empire-born painter, known for his paintings of indigenous cultures and folk traditions. He tended to paint scenes with throngs of people, and his favorite locations were in s ...

. After he died in 1964 she served as curator of retrospective exhibitions of his work held at the West Texas Museum and

New Mexico Museum of Art The New Mexico Museum of Art is an art museum in Santa Fe governed by the state of New Mexico. It is one of four state-run museums in Santa Fe that are part of the Museum of New Mexico. It is located at 107 West Palace Avenue, one block off the ...

. From 1972 to 1973 she visited Africa and India. She worked in

serigraph Screen printing is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink (or dye) onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open mesh ...

printing, pastel drawing, and painting. Her serigraphs have appeared in such collections as the Memphis Academy of Arts, Baltimore Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum.

Later life and legacy

Her awards include the National Treasury Competition Purchase Award in 1940, the Metropolitan Museum Purchase Prize in 1941 and the top purchase award in serigraph from the Santa Fe Art Museum. She received a Wurlitzer Foundation grant for the years 1956 and 1957. She died in 1977.

Notable collections

*''The Abandoned Sluice'',

watercolor Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

, Washington, D.C.

References

External links

Oral history interview with Dora Kaminsky, 1965
at the

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaminsky, Dora 1909 births 1977 deaths Art Students League of New York alumni American artists' models Artists from Taos, New Mexico American printers Women printers American women painters 20th-century American painters People from Delphi 20th-century American women artists