Ilya Bolotowsky | Biography | Hollis Taggart Galleries

Ilya Bolotowsky (1907-1981)

Ilya Bolotowsky was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1907. In September 1923, after two years in Turkey, his family immigrated to the United States and settled in New York. Bolotowsky attended the National Academy of Design from 1924 until 1930. While supporting himself by designing textiles and teaching in 1932, he received a scholarship that allowed him to spend nearly a year traveling and studying art in Europe. Soon after he returned to New York, Bolotowsky first saw a painting by Mondrian, an encounter that dramatically altered his view of art and led him to embrace Neoplasticism with idealistic emphasis on attaining order and balance. He also saw works by Miró around the same time, and his paintings from this period reflect his attemptto blend the abstractions of Mondrian with the biomorphic forms he found in Miró.

Soon, however, he abandoned all references to the tangible, material world in his paintings and started creating non-objective works. Working toward an ever flatter picture plane, he adopted Mondrian’s use of simplified forms, strongly defined horizontal and vertical lines, and a limited palette.

Throughout his career Bolotowsky was a highly regarded teacher and staunch promoter of abstract art in America. He was cofounder, charter member, and president of the American Abstract Artists, an organization formed in 1936. In the 1930s, Bolotowsky completed some of the first abstract murals for the Federal Art Project at the Williamsburg Housing Project. From 1946 on, after working as translator in Alaska during World War II, he held teaching positions at colleges across the United States, including a two-year stint filling in for Josef Albers at Black Mountain College. He participated in numerous group exhibitions and was honored with many one-person shows, including a retrospective exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York held in 1974. Bolotowsky died in New York in 1981.