Burgoyne Diller (1906-1965)
An early and influential proponent of geometric abstraction in the United States, Burgoyne Diller with was born in the Bronx in 1906 and raised in Buffalo, New York, and Battle Creek, Michigan. After studying at Michigan State College, he returned to New York in 1928 and took classes at the Art Students League with Jan Matulka and Hans Hofmann.
In the early 1930s Diller grew interested in the work of Kasimir Malevich and the Russian Constructivists, as well as the neoplastic paintings of Mondrian. He developed and maintained for the rest of his career a hard-edged non-objective geometric style that combined bright primary colors with black and white. Diller organized his work around three personal themes that he summarized as contiguous or related forms, separate or unrelated forms, and forms conveying movement.
From 1935 to 1940, Diller served as director of the Mural Division of the New York section of the WPA Federal Art Project and supervised the completion of more than 200 public murals. His position allowed him to play a key role in providing work for fellow abstract artists, among them Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, and Ilya Bolotowsky, during difficult times. During the same period, Diller was a founding member of American Abstract Artists and a participant in the group’s first exhibition in 1937.
After completing a tour of duty in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Diller accepted a teaching position at Brooklyn College from 1946 and remained on the faculty until his death in 1965. His work is represented in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, among others, and was the subject of a 1990 retrospective at the Whitney Museum of
American Art.
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