The papers of painter Abraham Walkowitz date from 1904-1969, and measure 2.9 linear feet. Found within the papers are biographical material; letters from artists, friends, and art collectors; business records; four interview transcripts; notes and writings; exhibition announcements, cataloges, and other printed material; and photographs of Walkowitz, friends, colleagues, and artworks.
Scope and Content Note:
The papers of painter Abraham Walkowitz date from 1904-1969, and measure 2.9 linear feet. Found within the papers are biographical material; letters from artists, friends, and art collectors; business records; four interview transcripts; notes and writings; exhibition announcements, catalogs, and other printed material; and photographs of Walkowitz, friends, colleagues, and artworks.
Biographical material consists of autobiographical notes, a citizenship certificate, membership and registration cards, medical records, and address books.
Letters, with scattered responses from Walkowitz, are primarily from colleagues including artists John Taylor Arms, George Biddle, Paula Eliasoph, Ivan G. Olinsky, Walter Pach, Alfred Stieglitz, Carl Van Vechten, and Max Weber, Boston art collector Louis Schapiro, publisher E. Haldeman-Julius, writer Horace Traubel, and dancers Elizabeth Duncan and Maria-Theresa Duncan, the sister and adopted daughter of Isadora Duncan respectively. Individual letters are primarily from the diverse group of notable people to whom Walkowitz had sent copies of his books. Also found are letters from art organizations and museums.
Business records consist of documents concerning the will of art collector George M. Dunaif, letters of acknowledgement of gifts of art work donated by Walkowitz to various museums, and miscellaneous financial material. Transcripts are of three interviews with Walkowitz and an interview with Walkowitz and Frank Kleinholz. Notes and writings include lists of names, addresses, and art work, miscellaneous lecture notes, and writings by Walkowitz and by others. Printed material consists of clippings, exhibition announcements and catalogs, reproductions of art work, and books by Walkowitz, and by Walkowitz and E. Haldeman-Julius.
The photographs series contains the most significant material in the collection. The majority of photographs are of Abraham Walkowitz, taken by many notable photographers including Arnold Genthe, Lotte Jacobi, Arnold Newman, Alfredo Valente, Carl Van Vechten, and Clarence White. Also found are photographs of friends and colleagues, as well as photographs of art work by Walkowitz and others.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 7 series:
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Material 1906-1944 (Box 1, 5; 8 folders)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1906-1966 (Box 1; 0.8 linear feet)
Series 3: Business Records, 1930-1956 (Box 1; 5 folders)
Series 4: Interview Transcripts, 1944-1958 (Box 1; 5 folders)
Series 5: Notes and Writings, 1904-1949 (Box 1-2; 26 folders)
Series 6: Printed Material, 1910-1969 (Box 2, 5; 0.8 linear feet)
Series 7: Photographs, 1904-1958 (Box 2-5; 0.9 linear feet)
Biographical Note:
Abraham Walkowitz (1878-1965) was a painter in Brooklyn, New York. Walkowitz was born in Tumen in Siberian Russia, the son of Jacob and Rita Schulman Walkowitz. Following the death of his father, a lay rabbi and cantor, in the late 1880s, Walkowitz immigrated to the United States with his mother and siblings and settled in the Lower East Side of New York City.
Walkowitz began his study of art at the Educational Alliance, at Cooper Union, and at the National Academy of Design. In early adulthood he worked as a sign painter and taught at the Educational Alliance from 1900 to 1906. He managed to save enough for passage to Paris where he continued his studies at the Académie Julian under Academic painter Jean-Paul Laurens. During this time, Walkowitz met Max Weber who introduced him to Matisse, Picasso, and Gertrude and Leo Stein. They exerted a considerable influence on Walkowitz's artistic development toward abstraction. Weber also introduced him to Isadora Duncan, whose style of improvisational dance inspired Walkowitz to create over 5,000 drawings and watercolors of her dancing form over the next four decades.
Walkowitz returned to New York in 1907 and laid claim to being the first to exhibit truly Modernist paintings in the United States with his exhibition at the Haas Gallery in 1908. After 1909, he became an intimate of Alfred Stieglitz's 291 Gallery where he became a regular exhibitor along with Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and John Marin, among others. Walkowitz's work appeared in landmark avant-garde exhibitions including the 1913 Armory Show, the Forum Exhibition of 1916, the People's Art Guild showings of contemporary art from 1915-1917, and the inaugural show of the Société Anonyme in 1920.
When interest in the Modernist movement diminished during the 1930s, Walkowitz's career also diminished, but he continued as an avid member and officer in the Society of Independent Artists. In the mid-1940s, he explored the varieties of the modernist vision in the form of an exhibition of 100 portraits of Walkowitz by 100 artist colleagues. The result was widely discussed and was featured in Life magazine in 1944. In 1945, Walkowitz travelled to Kansas to reunite with his colleague, E. Haldeman-Julius, to publish in a series of books concerning Walkowitz's art work. He also executed a series of drawings of the barns and strip mines in the area. But by 1946, glaucoma had begun to impair Walkowitz's vision, leading to his eventual blindness. Also in the mid-1940s, Walkowitz lost the contents of his studio to fire.
In 1963, Walkowitz received the Marjory Peabody Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. His work is represented in the collections of the Newark Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Abraham Walkowitz died on January 26, 1965 in Brooklyn, New York.
Related Material:
Also found at the Archives of American Art is an oral history interview of Abraham Walkowitz conducted by Abram Lerner and Mary Bartlett Cowdrey, December 8 and 22, 1958.
Provenance:
Portions of the papers were donated in 1959 by Abraham Walkowitz; in 1966 by Dr. Rosa E. Prigosen, the artist's niece; in 1981 through a transfer of material from the National Museum of American Art/National Portrait Gallery Library; and in 1996 by Howard and Lila Schulman.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Topic:
Painters -- New York (State) -- New York Search this
Lotte Jacobi and Laurie Lisle. Interviews with Lotte Jacobi and Hans Sahl, 1983 May 4 and 1984 February 25. Laurie Lisle research material on Georgia O'Keeffe and Louise Nevelson, 1902-1990. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Biographical sketches of artists who have exhibited at Lotte Jacobi Place and lists of works exhibited, 1964-1968, includes the following artists: Christopher Cook, Robert and Frances Flaherty, John Herrick, Lotte Jacobi, William H. Manahan, Jr., Robert E. Mueller, Louise Nevelson, Albert Renger-Patzsch, L.M.A. Roy, Luther Thompson, Minor White and Gustav Wolf.
Biographical / Historical:
Lotte Jacobi Place, Hillsboro, N.H. Founded by Lotte Jacobi of Deering, N.H. Born in Germany and moved to New York City in 1935. Studied at the Bavarian Academy of Photography, University of Munich and with her father. Was a well known portrait photographer, active in Berlin, 1927-1935. Fled Nazi Germany and opened a studio in New York. Best known for her portraits of Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Frost, Steichen, Stieglitz and Paul Strand. Also known for her "photogenics"--cameraless abstract light prints. Died 1990.
Provenance:
Donated 1978 by Lotte Jacobi.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Wilson, John, 1922 Apr. 14- -- Photographs Search this
Extent:
12 Items (photographic prints (on partial microfilm reel))
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Date:
1983
Scope and Contents:
Photographs of artists Joel Cobb, Allan Crite, Judy Dater, Xavier Gonzalez, Lotte Jacobi, Joel Meyerowitz, Henry Schwartz, Arnold S. Trachtman, William Wainwright, William Wegman, and John Wilson.
Biographical / Historical:
Michael Rinaldini is a photographer from Cambridge, Mass.
Provenance:
Donated 1983 by Michael Rinaldini.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Archives' Washington, D.C., Research Center. Microfilmed materials must be consulted on microfilm. Contact Reference Services for more information.
Rights:
Authorization to publish or reproduce requires written permission from Michael Rinaldini. Contact Reference Services for more information.
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
