About This Artwork
Study for the Hall of Medical Sciences mural at the 1939 World's Fair in New York, 1938/39
Oil on canvas
76.2 x 121.9 cm (30 x 48 in.)
Wilson L. Mead Fund, 1977.1
A pioneer of abstraction, Ilya Bolotowsky created numerous murals for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project. One of Bolotowsky’s early works, this study for a 1939 mural that was later destroyed shows his intent to create an ideal, balanced composition devoid of a dominant form. Strongly influenced by Joan Miró and later by Piet Mondrian, Bolotowsky sought to achieve compositional harmony in his works. Perhaps in response to the turmoil of the 1930s, American abstract artists looked to nonobjective art as a way to attain a sense of stability and equilibrium.
Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories
Exhibition History
New York, Washburn Gallery, WPA, March 13–April 13, 1974, ill.
New York, Washburn Gallery, American Abstract Painting from the 1930s and 1940s, September 9–October 2, 1976. cat??
Munich, Haus der Kunst, American Painting, 1930–1980, November 14, 1981–January 31, 1982, fig. 85.
Pittsburgh, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, 1927–1944, November 5–December 31, 1981, cat. 13; traveled to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, January 26–March 25, 1984, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, April 15–June 3, 1984, and Whitney Museum of American Art, June 28–September 9, 1984.
New York, Jewish Museum, Painting a Place in America: Jewish Artists in New York, 1900–1945, May 16–September 29, 1991, cat. 20, pl. 5.
Publication History
Judith A. Barter et al., "American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955," (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 125.