Untitled

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Untitled

Artist Ilya Bolotowsky (American, 1907-1981)

Date1936-1937

DimensionsPainting: 30 × 40 in. (76.2 × 101.6 cm)
Frame: 32 1/2 × 42 1/4 × 2 1/4 in. (82.6 × 107.3 × 5.7 cm)

MediumOil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineGift of the Woodward Foundation, by exchange

Object number

2005.102

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 05

Label TextHaving fled Russia as a teenager following World War I and the Russian Revolution, Ilya Bolotowsky described his artistic practice as encompassing a search for, “an ideal harmony and order… a free order, not militaristic, not symmetrical, not-goosestepping, not academic.” In his early practice, Bolotowsky attempted to combine the two major spheres of early 20th-century abstraction: geometric and biomorphic (abstract shapes based on organic forms in nature). When he created Untitled, he had been profoundly influenced by Piet Mondrian’s emphasis on the purity of form and color. Bolotowsky’s well-balanced composition illustrates his claim that “Abstract art…searches for new ways to achieve harmony and equilibrium.” Bolotowsky was a founder of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) in 1936, along with Gertrude Greene and Esphyr Slobodkina (his wife at the time), both also represented in this gallery. Figurative painting by artists like Edward Hopper dominated the American art scene during the period. Abstraction was considered too connected to European traditions, too inaccessible, and not socially relevant or “American enough.” Even with determined opposition, Bolotowsky and many members of AAA committed themselves to experimenting with abstraction for most of their artistic careers.Exhibition HistoryPittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, 1983; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, 1984; Minneapolis Institute of Art, 1984; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1984, Abstract Painting and Sculpture.