Background
Boris Solomon Aronson was born on October 15, 1900 in Nizhyn, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), one of ten children of Solomon Aronson, a rabbi, and Dvoyra Turovsky.
1947
Boris Aronson with his model stage for projected scenery
Boris Aronson
Boris Aronson
Boris Aronson presenting a scale model for A Little Night Music
1947
Boris Aronson with his model stage for projected scenery
Boris Aronson
Boris Aronson
Boris Aronson presenting a scale model for A Little Night Music
1971
Boris Aronson with his wife Lisa and Harold Prince
1920
1939
Boris Solomon Aronson was born on October 15, 1900 in Nizhyn, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), one of ten children of Solomon Aronson, a rabbi, and Dvoyra Turovsky.
Boris Aronson attended State Art School, Kyiv, and studied art and design with Ilya Mashkov at the School of Modern Painting, Moscow; Alexandra Exter at the School of the Theatre, Kyiv; and Herman Strauch in Berlin.
Solomon Aronson left for Berlin in 1922 and immigrated to the United States in 1923. In New York he began designing sets for Yiddish theater productions, first with the experimental Unser Theater and then the Yiddish Art Theater. Toward the end of his career, Aronson admitted that he experienced his greatest artistic gratification during this early period when he was allowed freedom to experiment.
Aronson next worked with Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre. During the Great Depression he joined the artistic collective The Group Theater and designed their productions of Awake and Sing! (1935), Paradise Lost (1935), and The Gentle People (1939). By the 1930's he was frequently designing for Broadway shows, including Three Men on a Horse (1935) and The Merchant of Yonkers (1938).
By the 1940's Aronson had expanded his design work to ballet (Ballet Theatre, Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo) and musical theater (Cabin in the Sky, 1940; South Pacific, 1949). His outstanding designs of the 1950's included the New York productions of The Country Girl (1950), The Rose Tattoo (1951), I Am a Camera (1951), the ballet Ballade (1952), The Crucible (1953), Bus Stop (1955), The Diary of Anne Frank (1955), Orpheus Descending (1957), and J. B. (1958). He also designed Coriolanus (1959) at Stratford-upon-Avon, England.
Aronson's greatest recognition and critical success came in the 1960's and 1970's with his work on musicals, considered to be his most innovative designs, especially those done in collaboration with producer Harold Prince. Notable among his musical designs were those for Fiddler on the Roof (1964), Cabaret (1966), Zorba (1968), Company (1970), Follies (1972), A Little Night Music (1973), and Pacific Overtures (1976). For the Metropolitan Opera he designed Mourning Becomes Electra (1967) and Fidelio (1970). In 1976 he designed Mikhail Baryshnikov's staging of The Nutcracker, his final project.
In addition to his artistic career, Aronson wrote two books, both in Russian: Marc Chagall (1923) and Modern Graphic Art (1924).
During a career that spanned five decades, Aronson, termed by director and critic Harold Clurman the "master visual artist of the stage," won the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for best design for The Rose Tattoo, The Country Girl, Season in the Sun (1951), Cabaret, Zorba, Company, Follies, and Pacific Overtures. He received six additional Tony nominations. His work was recognized by fellowships from the Guggenheim (1950) and Ford (1962) foundations. Aronson's designs, for approximately 125 productions, were noted for their originality, their strong sense of line and form, and a subtle but evocative use of color.
In 1940 he demonstrated for the first time a technique he called "projected scenery," a method of projecting colored slides (collages) on neutral or textured scenery in order to create and alter mood and space ("painting with light").
Many consider Aronson the most respected American scenic designer of the mid-twentieth century. He was a first-rate artist and his paintings and designs have been exhibited on many occasions in New York, Paris, and London, most notably in 1947 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 1981 at the New York Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, and in 1989 at the Katonah (New York) Gallery.
Aronson rarely repeated himself in his design work, using influences not only from his teachers but from the work of Marc Chagall (known for his cubist-fantastic style), Alexander Tairov (the antinaturalistic director of Moscow's Kamerny Theatre), and Nathan Altman (the designer for the Moscow Jewish Theatre), in addition to his childhood experiences in Russia and his travels in prewar Europe. A lifelong interest in Japanese popular arts was most clearly reflected in his designs for Pacific Overtures.
Quotations: "I strongly believe that for each play you first and foremost must create a space which, inherent in its design, already holds the mystique of the entire event."
In 1945 Boris Aronson married Lisa Jalowetz, an artistic assistant since 1943, who would continue to work with him professionally. They had one son.
Marc Henry Aronson is an American writer, editor, publisher, speaker, and historian. He writes history and biography nonfiction books for children and young adults.
