Biography
Robert Moskowitz in his Tribeca Studio, New York. Photo: Arnold Newman. Arnold Newman Collection / Getty Images
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Robert Moskowitz (1935-March 24, 2024) has been described as a significant link between the Abstract Expressionists of the New York School and New Image painters of the 1970s.
“Bob’s style is consistent in conversations as it is in the work; a variety of reflective statements on his personal life; an internal balancing, the method of a sensitive man whose gift is to adapt statements specifically about himself in terms that relate to a larger means.” —Michael Hurson
Moskowitz first gained recognition exhibiting at the Leo Castelli Gallery in the early 1960s. His inclusion in the historic exhibition Art of The Assemblage at The Museum of Modern Art in 1961, signaled his arrival into the contemporary discourse of the time. His work was featured in New Image Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1978, where together with works by Jennifer Bartlett, Michael Hurson, Neil Jenney, and Susan Rothenberg, Moskowitz’s pared-down often silhouetted images marked a resurgence of figurative painting in the late 1970s.
Awards include John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (‘67), New York State Council on the Arts Grant (‘73), National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist’s Fellowship (‘75). Teaching positions include Maryland Insitute College of Art, Baltimore (‘64-’73), School of Visual Arts, New York (‘69-71), Yale Norfolk Summer School (‘67,’69). Visiting Artist appointments include Art Institute of Chicago (‘74), Ohio State University (‘75). In 2001, Moskowitz was Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome.
In 1989, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden mounted a major retrospective of the artist’s work, which traveled to the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Over the course of his six-decade career, Moskowitz has focused on a variety of images, from well-known art historical sources to more commonplace things like birds, icebergs, and buildings, all executed against stark, monochromatic backgrounds. Using symbolism, metaphor, and repetition, the artist’s images offer arresting images of timelessness—a teetering balance between recognition and abstraction.