Ilya Yulievich Bolotowsky was an American painter of Russian descent who represented geometric abstractionism and cubism. Bolotowsky’s colourful paintings were also influenced by the De Stijl movement co-founded by Piet Mondrian.
Ilya Bolotowsky worked as a sculptor, muralist and educator as well.
Background
Ilya Yulievich Bolotowsky was born on July 1, 1907, in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire (currently Russian Federation). He was a son of Julius Yuryevich Bolotowsky, a lawyer, and Anastasia Abramovna Shapiro, a graphiс designer.
The artist had a sister named Mirra.
Ilya spent his childhood in Saint Petersburg. At the outbreak of the Revolution of 1917, the family moved to Baku, Azerbaijan and then to Constantinople.
Education
Ilya Bolotowsky received his primary education at home. In 1915, he entered the secondary school in Baku where he spent four years.
While in Constantinople, Turkey, Ilya had attended the Jesuit College of Saint Joseph from 1920 to 1923.
The following year, he became a student of the National Academy of Design in New York City and attended the course of the painter Ivan Grigorievich Olinsky. Among Bolotowsky’s fellow students were Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko. The artist obtained his diploma in 1930.
Besides, Ilya Bolotowsky took painting lessons from Dutch painter Piet Mondrian.
Ilya Bolotowsky started his career at the post of a textile designer. Saving enough money by 1932, he travelled around Europe to explore the art of such great masters like Picasso, Matisse and other avant-garde painters.
After his return to New York City, he had earned his living again as a textile designer for some time. In 1934, the artist produced his first mural for the Williamsburg Housing Project in Brooklyn commissioned by Works Progress Administration. This one was followed by many others, including the work for the Hall of Medical Science in the Health Building at the 1939 New York World's Fair.
In a couple of years after the first mural, Bolotowsky co-founded the Society of the American Abstract Artists and presented his artworks at the exhibition of the ‘Ten’ artistic group as he did the following year. One more group show of this period was the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.
Later, the artist took part at the foundation of the Federation of the Modern Painters and Sculptures which he had presided from 1957 to 1958.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Ilya Bolotowsky joined the Army Air Corps in 1942. While in the Army, he worked as a translator.
After his discharge in 1945, his paintings began to receive the public attention. He had his first personal exhibitions at J.B. Neumann's New Art Circle and at The Pinacotheca gallery. The following year, he began his teacher’s career at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina where he had taught for two years. Then, the artist shifted to the University of Wyoming where he spent nine years. While in Wyoming, Bolotowsky tried his hand as an experimental filmmaker. His first movies were based on both Greek myths or the myths he wrote himself. Later in his career, he produced a great number of educational films.
In 1954, the painter began his collaboration with Grace Borgenicht Gallery in New York City which had represented his art till the 1970s.
Three years later, Bolotowsky pursued his teacher’s activity at the State Teacher's College in New Paltz (currently the State University of New York at New Paltz) where he had worked as a Professor of Art till 1965. This year, he shifted to the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater where he had taught art for six years. Besides, at various times, he gave lessons on humanities and fine arts at the New York campus of Long Island University, at the Hunter College, at the Queens College, both in New York City and at the University of New Mexico.
It was this period when the painter started to use three-dimensional shapes often vertical and straight-sided.
Besides the painting and teaching activity, Ilya Bolotowsky was also known as an author of the plays and opera libretto both in Russian and English. In 1962, the artist composed ‘Russian-English Dictionary of Painting and Sculpture’ which contained two hundred words.
The important exhibitions of the 1970s included the shows at the University of New Mexico in 1970 and the solo show at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City four years later.
Untitled, From the Williamsburg Housing Project Murals
Rhomb in Red and Scarlett
Violet Rectangle
Abstraction
Untitled
Orange Tondo
Golden Diamond
Grey Diamond
Black Diamond
Untitled
Study for the Hall of Medical Sciences mural, 1939
Trylon
Red Blue White Rectangles
First Study for the Williamsburg Mural
Variation in Red Diamond
Large Architectural Composition
Pale Yellow and Blue Tondo
Double Diamond
Red Tondo
Untitled
Untitled Composition
Series 2
White, Black, Yellow, and Red
Views
Quotations:
"Abstract art searches for new ways to achieve harmony and equilibrium."
"Nowadays, when paintings torture the retina, when music gradually destroys the eardrum, there must all the more be a need for an art that searches for new ways to achieve harmony and equilibrium."
Connections
Ilya Bolotowsky's first wife was Esphyr Slobodkina, a painter. He married his second wife, Meta Cohen, on September 17, 1947.