artist
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Ilya Bolotowsky immigrated with his family to New York City in 1923, and the following year began studying at the National Academy of Design. He had his first one-man-show at G.R.D. Studios in 1930. Within the decade, he would become a member of "The Ten," a group of artists including Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb who explored the use of abstraction for expressive purposes. Heavily influenced by the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, whose work he first saw in 1933, Bolotowsky was initially inspired by Cubism and De Stijl, but evolved throughout his career to give way to an austere brand of geometric abstraction based upon line, shape, and color. In 1937, he became a founding member of the American Abstract Artists, who rejected American Scene painting. Bolotowsky turned gradually toward a clear and precise style reliant upon sharply defined linear structures, which varied in shape over the course of his career. His aim was to generate order through geometric abstraction and equilibrium. As the artist himself noted:
"Nowadays, when paintings torture the retina, when music gradually destroys the eardrum, there must, all the more, be a need for an art that searches for new ways to achieve harmony and equilibrium."
—Ilya Bolotowsky, 1974
His work espouses the aesthetic principles of Neo-Plasticism, the style for which he became a well-known arbiter. Bolotowsky's diamond-shaped canvases have brought results as high as $53,000 at auction to date.
provenance
Private Collection, Cranston, Rhode Island
exhibitions
1930 G.R.D. Studios, New York
1946 New Art Circle, J.B. Neumann, New York
1949 Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York
1950 Rose Fried Gallery, New York
1952 New Art Circle, J.B. Neuman, New York
1954 Grace Borgenicht Gallery, New York (also 1956,1958,1959,1961,1963,1966,1968,1970,1974,1976,1978,1980)
1960 State University College of Education, New Paltz, New York
1965 Parish Art Museum, South Hampton, New York
1970 IIya Bolotowsky Paintings and Columns, traveling to Newport Harbor Art Museum, Balboa, California, University of Colorado, Boulder, University Art Museum of New Mexico, Albuquerque, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City
1973 Recent Serigraphs, Wichita Art Museum, Kansas
1974 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, IIya Bolotowsky, travelled to the National Collection, Washington, D.C.
1980 IIya Bolotowsky, WPA Murals: Paintings From 1935 to 1945, Washburn Gallery, New York
1981 Salt Lake Art Center, Utah
1982 Yares Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona
1983 Bolotowsky And His Circle, New York University Grey Art Gallery
1984 Five Decades, Washburn Gallery, New York IL Punto Blu Gallery, Southampton, New York River Gallery, Irvington-On-Hudson, New York Pembroke Gallery, Houston, Texas