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Theodore Roszak (1907-1981)


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White Construction, 1932-1933 oil, wood and plaste...

White Construction, 1932-1933
oil, wood and plaster construction
40 x 40 x 9 inches

Study for Stratosphere Hop, c.1932 conte crayon on...

Study for Stratosphere Hop, c.1932
conte crayon on paper
22 1/2 x 19 1/8

signed

Untitled, 1936 oil on Masonite 48 x 62 1/2 inches...
Untitled, 1936
oil on Masonite
48 x 62 1/2 inches
signed and dated
Untitled (Study for Invocation), 1948 ink, gouache...

Untitled (Study for Invocation), 1948
ink, gouache and wash on paper
14 x 10 inches
signed with estate stamp signature verso / dated verso

 

Untitled, c.1950 welded steel 27 1/2 x 20 x 19 1/2...

Untitled, c.1950
welded steel
27 1/2 x 20 x 19 1/2 inches 

Untitled (The Furies of Folly Cove), c.1950 gouach...

Untitled (The Furies of Folly Cove), c.1950
gouache and ink on paper
22 x 30 1/4 inches
signed with estate stamp signature verso

Rite of Passage, 1952-53 nickel silver brazed on s...
Rite of Passage, 1952-53
nickel silver brazed on steel
50 1/2 x 26 x 13 inches
signed 
Golden Serpent (aka Sea Sentinel), c.1958 ink and...

Golden Serpent (aka Sea Sentinel), c.1958
ink and wash on paper
42 1/4 x 26 3/4 inches
signed with estate stamp signature verso

 

Insect Plant, 1957 steel brazed with copper 46 1/2...

Insect Plant, 1957
steel brazed with copper
46 1/2 x 23 x 17 inches

 

Self-Portrait, 1962 ink, wash and tape on paper 23...

Self-Portrait, 1962
ink, wash and tape on paper
23 x 14 1/2 inches / 58.4 x 36.8 cm
signed

Untitled, c.1972 ink, watercolor, and ballpoint pe...

Untitled, c.1972
ink, watercolor, and ballpoint pen on paper
23 x 35 inches

Skin-Divers, 1976 watercolor and ink on paper 8 7/...

Skin-Divers, 1976
watercolor and ink on paper
8 7/8 x 11 7/8 inches

signed and dated

Winter and Mother Earth, 1976 ballpoint pen and wa...

Winter and Mother Earth, 1976

ballpoint pen and wash on paper

12 x 9 inches

signed

Weather Balloons Over Crater, c.1977 graphite on p...

Weather Balloons Over Crater, c.1977
graphite on paper
30 1/80 x 40 inches
signed with estate stamp signature verso

Untitled, 1979 graphite on paper 60 x 47 1/2 inche...

Untitled, 1979
graphite on paper
60 x 47 1/2 inches

signed 


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Artist Information

“The new human content, as it appears in modern art is shaped organically out of an evolution of forms that have a corresponding bearing upon historic necessity for us today. It arises painfully, yet naturally, out of heaps of fragments and experiments that result from decades of accumulated ‘visual ideas.’ It emerges out of a plethora of plastic elements that belong entirely to our contemporary vocabulary, visually revealing bones, nerves and senses as well as man's varied state of being. The life abundance suggested here, is of no less importance than the inexhaustible store of shapes, volumes and space."[1]

Born in Posen (now Poznan), Poland, Theodore Roszak (1907–1981) was two years old when his family moved to Chicago, settling amid the city’s large Polish community. Roszak’s mother was a dress designer who nurtured his interest in art and, in 1920, he won the Chicago Herald-Examiner’s National Art Contest for Public Schools. He pursued serious art study as a teenager, taking classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and after finishing high school in 1924, Roszak enrolled at the Art Institute full time. After winning two of the Institute’s awards in his first year, Roszak decided to move to New York to study privately with Aschan School painter George Luks and take philosophy courses at Columbia University. In 1929 Roszak was awarded a fellowship that allowed him to spend two years in Europe, where he first discovered the work of Metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico, whose desolate, enigmatic scenes of Classical architectures would have a formative impact on the young artist. While living in Prague Roszak also befriended a circle of artists who introduced him to the principles of Bauhaus design and Constructivist ideology, two schools of thought that the young artist would take up as his own guiding principles in his early career.

Roszak returned to the US in 1930 to live and work at the Tiffany Foundation on Long Island. The decade that followed would be defined by a series of early successes; in 1931 he established a small studio on Staten Island, where he began experimenting with machine-shop tools and composing plaster models of his earliest constructions. By 1933 the Whitney Museum of American included his work in the First Biennial of Contemporary American Painting and the Art Institute of Chicago awarded him the Eisendrath Award for Painting. The following year Roszak moved his studio to 241 East 33rd Street in Manhattan, where he was able to devote more time to his sculpture practice. Like many American artists during the Great Depression, he was able to find regular work through the Federal Art Project: he taught at the Design Laboratory, a tuition-free, experimental design school that promoted Bauhaus and Constructivist approaches to art and opened under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration. The year 1935 proved to be even more prodigious, as the Whitney selected his painting Fisherman’s Bride (1934) for their second Biennial and then purchased the work for their permanent collection. Another of his paintings, Seated Figure (date) was awarded The Joseph N. Eisendrath Prize by the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Roerich Museum’s International Art Center in New York staged the artist’s first solo exhibition.

The second half of the 1930s witnessed the creation of Roszak’s first mature “constructions”: sleek, free-standing and wall-mounted sculptures of plastic and wood rooted in pure geometric abstraction. After the Design Laboratory closed, Roszak found work assisting industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes at the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York, where they constructed a large-scale model of futuristic urban centers and connecting highways. From 1940 to 1945, Roszak designed and fabricated aircraft as an employee at the Brewster Aircraft Corporation in Newark, NJ, including an experimental bomber. This undertaking left an indelible mark on his art, as the destruction wrought by the machinery of war left the artist deeply critical of the constructivist ideology’s optimistic faith


[1] Theodore Roszak, artist statement in New Images of Man, exhibition catalogue (New York, NY: The Museum of Modern Art, 1959).

 

in technology. He began welding with an oxyacetylene torch, and his compositions evolved away from the streamlined style he had previously embraced. Although Roszak’s welded sculptures continued to be abstract, their forms took on a far more expressionistic quality, manifesting an organic, surrealistic style that stands in sharp contrast to the architectural, man-made forms of his early career. This shift was presaged in a series of gouaches created in the early 1940s that explored questions of myth and ritual, an interest he shared with mythologist Joseph Campbell, a colleague of Roszak’s at Sarah Lawrence College, where the artist taught from 1941 to 1955. In 1948, the Museum of Modern Art bought its first Roszak sculpture, Spectre of Kitty Hawk (1946–47).

Roszak’s career continued to thrive throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In 1956, the Rodin Museum in Paris mounted a solo exhibition of his work, and a traveling mid-career retrospective was organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In 1959, he received a grant from the Ford Foundation, New York, and was included in the landmark New Images of Man exhibition at MoMA. As his career grew, so did the scale of his work and his interest in flight. In the late 1950s, Roszak created an aluminum eagle weighing a full ton with a wingspan of over thirty-five feet for Eero Saarinen’s US Embassy building in London. For the 1964 World’s fair, Roszak welded his colossal Forms in Transit—a rocket-shaped, forty-three-foot sculpture comprised of aluminum, steel, and sheet metal—and in 1968, his twenty-five-foot bronze Sentinel was installed at the Public Health Laboratories on East 27th Street, New York. In 1969, Roszak began a six-year position as a member of the Fine Arts Commission, and in 1971, he was elected to the Board of Trustees of the American Academy in Rome. That year the artist suffered a heart attack and his physical health began a slow decline, resulting in a decline in his sculptural production. Refocusing his remaining energies on his drawing practice, Roszak cultivated an expansive body of late works on paper characterized by fantastical subjects, satire, politics, and science fiction before succumbing to heart failure in 1981.

Roszac’s work may be found in public collections around the world including the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, ME; Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, CA; Carnegie Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Colby Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University, MI; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN; Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts Stanford University, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Montclair Art Museum, NJ; MIT List Visual Arts Center, MA; Museo de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Museum of Art Warsaw, Poland; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Newark Museum, NJ; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY New Paltz, NY; Saint Louis Art Museum, MO; SMART Museum of Art at The University of Chicago, IL; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Tate Museum, London, UK; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; The de Young Musem, San Francisco, CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY; The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; University of Illinois Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; Walker Art Center Collection, Minneapolis, MN; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven CT.

Since 2008, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC has represented the Estate of Theodore Roszak in cooperation with Jeffrey Hoffeld Fine Art.

1922
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (night Classes)

1925
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (with John Norton, Boris Anisfeld, Charles F. Kelley)

1926
National Academy of Design, New York, NY (with Charles Hawthorne)
Columbia University, New York, NY (logic and philosophy)

1927
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
 

SELECTED MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA
Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH
Albany Museum of Art, Albany, GA
Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, AZ
Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
Ball State University Museum of Art, Muncie, IN
Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Colorado University Art Museum, Boulder, CO
Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA
Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, AR
Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH
Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA
Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
The Flint Institute of the Arts, Flint, MI
Grinnell College Art Collection, Grinnell, IA
Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA
The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL
Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, MN
Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ
The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Museu de Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Museum of Art, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Museum of Fine Art, Houston, TX
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
National Gallery, Washington, DC
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
The New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ
New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY
Neuberger Museum, State University of New York, Purchase, NY
The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL
Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ
San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA
St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO
Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NB
The David and Alfred Smart Museum. The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, NY
Tate Modern, London, England
Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS
University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA
Worcester Museum of Art, Worcester, MA
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

1935 
International Art Center, Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York, NY

1936
Albany Institute of Art and History, Albany, NY

1940 
Severity and Nostalgia in 1940: Abstract Sculpture by Theodore Roszak, Julien Levy Gallery, New York, NY

1951
Theodore Roszak, Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, NY

1953
Roszak: drawings, Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, NY

1956
Theodore Roszak, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles  County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA; Seattle Art  Museum, Seattle, WA
Rodin Museum, Paris, France

1958
Fairweather Hardin Gallery, Chicago, IL
Retrospective, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH; Virginia  Museum of Art, Richmond, VA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; University of Wisconsin, Madison,  WI; Catholic University of America, Washington, DC

1962
Theodore Roszak: Sculpture, Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, NY

1971
Century Association, New York, NY

1973
Harold Ernst Gallery, Boston, MA

1974
Roszak: Lithographs and Drawings 1971-1974, Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, NY

1976
Roszak, The Arts Club of Chicago and  Fairweather Hardin Gallery, Chicago, IL

1978
Theodore Roszak, Constructions: 1932-1945, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY

1979
Theodore Roszak: Drawings for Constructions, 1931-1945, and Preparatory Sketches, Models, and Castings for the  MIT Bell Tower, 1955, Hayden Gallery, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

1981
Memorial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Theodore Roszak: Recent Drawings, Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL

1984
Theodore Roszak: Photograms, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY
The Theodore Roszak Bequest, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA

1985
Galerie Zabriskie, Paris, France

1986
Theodore Roszak: The Early Works, 1929-1945, Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KA

1989
Theodore Roszak: Paintings and Drawings from the Thirties, Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, NY

1992
Theodore Roszak: The Drawings, Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AK; Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH; Colby College Museum of Art,   Waterville, ME
Theodore Roszak, Constructivist Works, 1931-1947: Paintings, Constructions, Drawings, Photograms, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, NY
Theodore Roszak: Constructivist Works, 1931-1944, Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

1994
Theodore Roszak: Sculpture and Drawings, 1942-1963, Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, NY

1997
Theodore Roszak: Lighter than Air, Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, NY

2003
Theodore Roszak, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, NY

2005
Theodore Roszak: Working Drawings for MIT Bell Tower, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

2008
Theodore Roszak, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY

2014
Theodore Roszak Lithographs, John Davis Gallery, New York, NY2016

2016 Theodore Roszak: Propulsive Transfiguration, A Survey of Drawings from 1928 to 1980, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

1928
Chicago Society of Artists, Chicago, IL

1929
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

1931
Anderson Gallery, New York, NY

1932
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA
California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN
First Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1933
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Honolulu Academy of the Arts, Honolulu, HI
Oakland Art Museum, Oakland, CA
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1934
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1935
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Abstract Painting in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Second Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1936
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Uptown Gallery, New York, NY
Third Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1937
Exhibition of Recent Paintings: Joseph de Martini, Nathaniel Dirk, Hans Foy, L. Jean Liberte, Theodore Roszak, The  Guild Art Gallery, New York, NY
Fourth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1938
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Annual Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (exhibited consistently until the mid-1960s)

1941
Fourteen Americans, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

1947
Fifty-Eighth Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

1951
Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
American Sculpture 1951, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Six Sculptors: Ivan Metrovic, William Zorach, Jose de Creeft, Theodore Roszak, Seymour Lipton, Leo Amino, This Exhibition is Evidence of the Vitality and Diversity of Sculpture Today, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY

1953
International Sculpture Competition: The Unknown Political Prisoner (American Preliminary Exhibition), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 
International Sculpture Competition: The Unknown Political Prisoner, Tate Gallery, London, England

1957
1957 Annual Exhibition: Sculpture, Paintings, Watercolors, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1959
The Collection of Sara Roby Foundation, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
New Images of Man, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

1960
Quattro Artisti Americani: Guston, Hofmann, Kline, Roszak, organized by The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD with the collaboration of The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; XXX Biennale, Venice, Italy

1962
Geometric Abstraction in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1964
Between the Fairs: 25 Years of American Art, 1939-1964, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Artists for CORE: Third Annual Art Exhibition and Sale, Gallery of American Federation of Arts, American Federation of Arts, New York, NY

1966
Artists for CORE Scholarship, Education and Defense Fund, Fifth Annual Exhibition and Sale, Grippi & Waddell Gallery, New York, NY

1968
The 1930’s: Painting and Sculpture in America, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1969
Human Concern/Personal Torment: The Grotesque in American Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, CA

1976
Two Hundred Years of American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1978
20th Century American Drawings: Five years of Acquisitions, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1979
Vanguard American Sculpture 1913-1939, Rutgers University Art Gallery, New Brunswick, NJ; William Hayes  Ackland Art Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE; The Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA

1981
Drawing Acquisitions, 1978-1981, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1983
Memorial Exhibition: Ilya Bolotowsky, Gilmore D. Clarke, Jose De Creeft, Theodore Roszak, Jack Tworkov, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, NY
Beyond the Plane: American Constructions 1930-1965, New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ; The Art Gallery, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Dreams and Nightmares: Utopian Visions in Modern Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian  Institution, Washington, DC
Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, 1927-1944, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN;   Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1984
The Third Dimension: Sculpture of the New York School, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Fort Worth Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA
Sculptors’ Drawings 1910-1980, Selections from the Permanent Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1985
Contrasts of Form, Geometric Abstract Art 1910-1980, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Flying Tigers: Painting and Sculpture in New York 1939-1946, Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI; Cantor Art Gallery, College of the Holy Cross, Worchester, MA; The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, Long Island, NY
Sculptural Expressions: Seven Artists in Metal and Drawing 1947-1960: Herbert Ferber, David Hare, Ibram Lassaw, Seymour Lipton, Reuben Nakian, Theodore Roszak, David Smith, Sarah Lawrence College Gallery, Bronxville, NY

1986
Painting and Sculpture Acquisitions, 1973-1986, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
The Machine Age in America 1918-1941, The Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

1987
Progressive Geometric Abstraction in America, 1934-1955, Fred L. Emerson Gallery, Hamilton College, Clinton NY;  Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, MA; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, IL; Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

1988
Sculpture Inside Outside, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Vital Signs: Organic Abstraction from the Permanent Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1989
Art in Place: Fifteen Years of Acquisitions, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

1991
Art of the Forties, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
The Second Wave: American Abstraction of the 1930’s and 1040’s, Selections from the Penny and Elton Yasuna  Collection, Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA; Samuel P. Harn Museum, University of Florida,   Gainesville, FL; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE
The Technological Muse, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY
Abstract Sculpture in America, 1930-1970, Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL; Museum of the Arts, Quebec City, Canada; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, IL

1993
Aspects of American Abstraction, 1930-1942, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
Abstract Expressionism: Works on Paper: Selections from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of  Art, New York, NY; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA

1994
Between Transcendence and Brutality: American Sculptural Drawings from the 1940’s and 1950’s, Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL; Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR; The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY
New York Realism: Past and Present, Odakyu Museum, Tokyo, Japan; Kagoshima City Museum of Art, Kogoshima Japan;  Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Kitakyushu City, Japan; The Museum of Art, Kintetsu, Osaka, Japan; Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art, Fukushima City, Japan; Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL

1998
American Abstract Art of the 1930’s and 1940’s: The J. Donald Nichols Collection, Wake Forrest University, Winston-Salem, NC
Defining the Edge: Early American Abstraction, Selections from the Collection of Dr. Peter B. Fischer, Michael  Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA

2001
Vital Forms: American Art and Design in the Atomic Age, 1940-1960, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY;  Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; First Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN; Los Angeles County   Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ
Meaning, Medium and Method: American Sculpture 1940-1960, Selections from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York State Museum, Albany, NY

2002
Modernism and Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA

2003
The Art of Organic Forms, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
Mid-Century American Abstraction: Master Works on Paper, The David and Alfred Smart Museum, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Conversations: A Collection in Dialogue, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA

2004
Radicals and Conservatives: Abstraction 1945 to the Present, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

2005
Organic New York, 1941-1949, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
Welded! Sculpture of the Twentieth Century, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY

2008
Eye on the Collection: Views and Viewpoints, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA
No Images of Man, Gering & López Gallery, New York, NY
Modern Masters from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami, FL; Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, PA; Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, OH; Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, Nashville, TN; Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC

2009
Wired, Welded, Cast & Carved: American Abstract Sculpture, 1952-1962, National Academy Museum, New York, NY
New at the Morgan: Acquisitions Since 2004, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY
Abstract Expressionism: Further Evidence (Part Two: Sculpture), Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY
Masterworks from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME

2010
Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s–1950s, Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
Unconscious Unbound: Surrealism in America, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY
Precarious Balance, Martha Parrish & James Reinish, Inc., New York, NY
Different Strokes: Twentieth Century Drawings, George Adams Gallery, New York, NY

2011
Abstract Expressionism: Reloading the Canon, A Selection of Paintings and Sculpture, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, LLC, New York, NY
Forms of the Fifties: Tendencies in Mid-century Fine and Decorative Arts, James Reinish & Associates, Inc., New York, NY

2012
Encounters with the 1930’s, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain
Art of Another Kind:  International Abstraction and the Guggenheim, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
INsite/INchelsea: The Inaugural Exhibition, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

2013
Natural Selections, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA

2014 
Man Meets Machine, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, sponsored by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Stanford, CA

2015
Abstraction: Drawings by Scuptors, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Modern Photographs from the Thomas Walther Collection, 1909–1949, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Recent Acquisitions, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY
America Is Hard to See, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

2016      
Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

2017
Why Draw? 500 Years of Drawings and Watercolors at Bowdoin College, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME

2018
Sculpture Garden Installation, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
50th Collectors Show and Sale, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR
Modern American Realism: Highlights from the Smithsonian’s Sara Roby Foundation Collection, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR

2019
“Four Paintings Looking Right,” curated by Richard Prince, Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Spiritual by Nature, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
Globalism Pops BACK Into View: The Rise of Abstract Expressionism, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

2020      
Paper Power, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY
Adelyn Breeskin: Curating a Legacy, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD

2021      
Surrealism in American Art, Centre de la Vielle Charité, Marseille, France

 

1920
Winner, National Art Contest for Public Schools, awarded by the Chicago Herald-Examiner

1924
Lithograph and Trebilcock Awards, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

1929
American Traveling Fellowship, awarded by The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Anna Louise Raymond Fellowship for European Study, awarded by The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Silver Medal for Painting, Poznan, Poland

1931
Tiffany Foundation Fellowship, awarded by the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Long Island, NY

1934
Eisendrath Award for Painting, awarded by the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

1948 
Frank G. Logan Medal, awarded by the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

1951
Purchase Award, awarded by the Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil
Frank G. Logan Medal, awarded by the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Faculty Fellowship, awarded by Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY
International Award and Purchase, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England

1952
Purchase Award, awarded by the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL
American Award, awarded by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
International Award, awarded by the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England

1956 
George E. Widener Gold Medal Award for Sculpture, awarded by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA

1959
Ford Foundation Grant, awarded by the Ford Foundation, New York, NY

1961
Campagna Award, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

1962
Griner Award, Indiana

1967
Century Association Medal, New York, NY

 

1956-58 
Member of Advisory Board of National Committee of Arts and Government

1959-62 
Member of Advisory Board of National Committee of Art and Architecture, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven CT

1960-61 
U.S. Delegate to International Art Council Congress, Vienna, Austria

1961-67 
Member of Advisory Committee on Cultural Presentation Program, State Department, Washington, DC

1962 
Member of the Board of Trustees, Tiffany Foundation
Member of Board of Governors, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
Member of Fine Arts Commission (held until 1966)

1964 
Delegate and Participant on Higher Education in American Republics, Lima Peru
1964-65 Member of National Institute of Arts and Letters 

1965  
Charter Member, Drawing Society
1969-75 Member of Fine Arts Commission, New York

1970-72 
Member of Board of Trustees, American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy
 

Roszak, Theodore. “Some Problems of Modern Sculpture.” Magazine of Art 42 (February 1949): 53-56.