Albert Eugene Gallatin (1881-1952)
Born in Villanova, Pennsylvania, to a prominent banking family of Swiss descent, A. E. Gallatin was heir to a large fortune that enabled him to start an art collection at the age of 17. Initially interested in Post-Impressionism, American Impressionism, and the work of painter William Glackens, he became a passionate collector and a patron of modernist art after World War I. His collection brought together paintings by American modernists including Charles
Demuth, Charles Sheeler, and John Marin, and works by Picasso, Braque, Mondrian, Miró, and Juan Gris, fusing European and American developments.
Gallatin began painting in 1926, when he studied for a short time with Robert Henri and then in Paris. A repeat visitor to the studios of Picasso, Braque, and Gris, he developed a style informed by their Synthetic Cubist works. Along with critic and painter George L. K. Morris, Suzy Frelinghuysen, and Charles G. Shaw, Gallatin formed an influential coterie of artists committed to promoting
American abstraction.
Between 1927 and 1936 Gallatin gave up painting to focus on the establishment of the Gallery of Living Art. In 1927, he founded a permanent location for his broad and adventurous art collection. The Gallery of Living Art opened on the campus of New York University and became an important destination for American artists and art enthusiasts who were eager to see modern art firsthand. In the 1930s, Gallatin began concentrating on non-objective art with the guidance of Morris and French artist Jean Hélion, a founder of the Abstraction-Création group.
World War II limited Gallatin’s ability to collect art from Europe and resulted in a new focus on American art, particularly works by members of the American Abstract Artists group, which Gallatin joined in 1937. The Gallatin collection moved to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1943. Gallatin died in 1952.
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