Skip to main contentBiographyBold color and strident forms have been the hallmarks of much twentieth-century abstraction. The resultant visual tension is in keeping, it seems, with the speed and vibrancy of modern life. Nicholas Krushenick (1929–1999) exemplified this trend with his stark renditions that made him a forerunner to Pop art.
Born in the East Bronx, Krushenick lived and worked in New York City all his life. From 1946 to 1948, he served in the United States Army, as the post librarian at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. He studied at the Art Students League on the G.I. Bill from 1948 until 1950, followed by a year at the Hans Hofmann School. From 1952 to 1956, Krushenick worked at the Museum of Modern Art as their assistant master framer and also opened an antique store in Greenwich Village for a year with his brother, John Krushenick. In 1957, the two of them established an artists’ cooperative, the Brata Gallery, in the Tenth Street district, which included artists Al Held, George Sugarman, and Yayoi Kusama.
An admirer of Hofmann, Krushenick initially worked in an Abstract Expressionist mode, but, by 1960, he developed his characteristic style of flat areas of strong color with heavy black outlines. This modus operandi associated him with the Pop artists, although he did not share their use of images derived from popular culture. Instead, he identified Ferdinand Léger and Henri Matisse as sources of inspiration, especially the latter’s paper cutouts. In addition, he highly regarded the work of his colleagues the Color Field painters Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland.
Krushenick’s adventures in printmaking began by learning how to silkscreen in the late 1950s. In 1965, he received a fellowship at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles where, working with renowned master printmaker Ken Tyler, he produced twenty-two lithographs over two months. He returned to Tamarind a decade later when it relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Krushenick made lithographs with Graphicstudio in Tampa, Florida, and silkscreen editions with Edition Domberger in Stuttgart and Galerie der Spiegel in Cologne, Germany.
In 1958, Krushenick’s first one-man show took place at the Camino Gallery, followed two years later by an exhibition at the Graham Gallery. Noted critic Clement Greenberg included him in Post-Painterly Abstraction, a seminal exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964. Krushenick taught from the mid-1960s until 1991 as a visiting artist and professor at Cooper Union and the School of Visual Arts, both in New York, and at Yale University and the University of Maryland in College Park.
Critic J. Bowyer Bell described Krushenick’s work as “a special kind of abstract pop, resonant of New York, informed by the New York School, urban and urbane, and always driven by the evolving imperatives of his surface, his concepts, his vision. … The work is obvious even to the innocent, and yet so canny and skilled as to charm the profession.” [1]
Notes:
[1] J. Bowyer Bell, “Krushenick Again/Always,” Review: the Critical State of Visual Art in New York (September 15, 1997), 1 and 6.
Nicholas Krushenick
1929 - 1999
Born in the East Bronx, Krushenick lived and worked in New York City all his life. From 1946 to 1948, he served in the United States Army, as the post librarian at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. He studied at the Art Students League on the G.I. Bill from 1948 until 1950, followed by a year at the Hans Hofmann School. From 1952 to 1956, Krushenick worked at the Museum of Modern Art as their assistant master framer and also opened an antique store in Greenwich Village for a year with his brother, John Krushenick. In 1957, the two of them established an artists’ cooperative, the Brata Gallery, in the Tenth Street district, which included artists Al Held, George Sugarman, and Yayoi Kusama.
An admirer of Hofmann, Krushenick initially worked in an Abstract Expressionist mode, but, by 1960, he developed his characteristic style of flat areas of strong color with heavy black outlines. This modus operandi associated him with the Pop artists, although he did not share their use of images derived from popular culture. Instead, he identified Ferdinand Léger and Henri Matisse as sources of inspiration, especially the latter’s paper cutouts. In addition, he highly regarded the work of his colleagues the Color Field painters Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland.
Krushenick’s adventures in printmaking began by learning how to silkscreen in the late 1950s. In 1965, he received a fellowship at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles where, working with renowned master printmaker Ken Tyler, he produced twenty-two lithographs over two months. He returned to Tamarind a decade later when it relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Krushenick made lithographs with Graphicstudio in Tampa, Florida, and silkscreen editions with Edition Domberger in Stuttgart and Galerie der Spiegel in Cologne, Germany.
In 1958, Krushenick’s first one-man show took place at the Camino Gallery, followed two years later by an exhibition at the Graham Gallery. Noted critic Clement Greenberg included him in Post-Painterly Abstraction, a seminal exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964. Krushenick taught from the mid-1960s until 1991 as a visiting artist and professor at Cooper Union and the School of Visual Arts, both in New York, and at Yale University and the University of Maryland in College Park.
Critic J. Bowyer Bell described Krushenick’s work as “a special kind of abstract pop, resonant of New York, informed by the New York School, urban and urbane, and always driven by the evolving imperatives of his surface, his concepts, his vision. … The work is obvious even to the innocent, and yet so canny and skilled as to charm the profession.” [1]
Notes:
[1] J. Bowyer Bell, “Krushenick Again/Always,” Review: the Critical State of Visual Art in New York (September 15, 1997), 1 and 6.
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