Background

Nicholas Krushenick was born on March 31, 1929 in New York City, New York, United States. He was a son of John Krushenick and Anna (Wilhoey) Krushenick.

Education

Initially, Krushenick studied at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. Later, during the period from 1948 to 1950, Nicholas attended Art Students League of New York. In 1950, he entered Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, where he remained till 1951.

Career

After military service during World War II, Nicholas Krushenick worked on the construction of the Major Deegan Expressway. In 1957, he and his brother, John Krushenick, established a framing shop, which quickly turned into an artists' cooperative, called Brata Gallery. The same year, he held his first solo exhibition at the Camino Gallery. Some time later, in 1962, Krushenick left Brata Gallery and started to exhibit his works around the world. Also, during the 1950's, the painter created collages of geometric figures.

By the early 1960's, Nicholas had solidified the geometric aspect of his work into simple abstract motifs, sometimes suggestive of landscapes and sometimes of billboards, whose shapes were outlined in heavy black lines. Although, similar to the paintings, based on cartoons, that Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol were making, Krushenick's paintings kept their distance from the images of commercial art.

During his lifetime, the painter held the post of a visiting artist at different educational institutions, including the School of Visual Arts in New York (1965), Minneapolis College of Art and Design (1967), Cooper Union (1967-1969), Cornell University (1970) and others. Also, since 1969 till 1979, he served as an art critic at Yale University. In 1977, Nicholas was appointed a teacher at the University of Maryland in College Park, a post he held till 1991.

Nicholas Krushenick held many solo exhibitions at different galleries, including Camino Gallery and Graham Gallery in New York, Galerie Müller in Stuttgart, Galerie Sonnabend in Paris and others. Also, he took part in numerous group exhibitions.

Achievements

• Nicholas Krushenick gained prominence for his paintings, which use bold Liquitex colors and juxtapose black lines, which fall under the category of pop abstraction. Also, he co-founded Brata Gallery.
  
  His works are kept in public collections of different museums and art centres in the United States and Europe, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Stedelijk in Amsterdam and others.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

  • Grand Entrance

  • Untitled

  • Ancient Image

  • James Bond Meets Pussy Galore

  • Flying Circus

  • Untitled

  • Quick Red Fox

  • Skyscape II

  • Crossover

  • Greenwood

  • Pumpkin

  • Untitled

  • Boston Tea Party

  • Wire Mill

  • Over the Rainbow

Membership

• Guggenheim Foundation , United States

  1967

Connections

Father:

John Krushenick

Mother:

Anna (Wilhoey) Krushenick

Brother:

John Krushenick

References

• Nicholas Krushenick: Electric Soup
  2017
• Nicholas Krushenick: A Survey
  2012