Born in Russia in 1878, Abraham Walkowitz came to the United States following the death of his Rabbi father. He and his two sisters settled in New York, where his now-single mother fed and clothed the family by managing a Delancey Street newsstand. The talented and precocious Abraham's early glimpses of modern art both "scared" and "stimulated" him, and they also led to further study at the National Academy of Design and the Académie Julian in Paris.
Abraham, Isadora and Max
While in Paris, Walkowitz met two individuals who would strongly influence his life and work: fellow artist and Expressionist Max Weber, and the famed dancer Isadora Duncan. Walkowitz first encountered Duncan at the studio of sculptor Auguste Rodin, and this free-spirited female—who had already had such a major impact on other dancers and so many creative souls—soon became Walkowitz's muse.
Throughout his career, Walkowitz produced literally thousands of portraits of Duncan, capturing her flowing grace and power with such skill that Duncan reportedly declared that Walkowitz had managed to tell her life story without using a single word. Walkowitz was also reportedly one of Duncan's many lovers before her untimely, accidental death in 1927.
Walkowitz and Polish-born Weber were both students at Paris' Académie de Beaux-Arts, and when Weber eventually made his way to America as well, Walkowitz helped his friend Max to get gallery representation in New York. Walkowitz himself had had difficulty finding a gallery outlet, as options were limited in those pre-1913 Armory Show days and avant-garde inclinations not quite yet the rage. Walkowitz even contemplated playing the violin to make a living, despite the fact that he didn't really care for violin music.
From Monstrosities to Modernist
Walkowitz was able to persuade gallery owner Julius Haas to show his work, however, with much resulting outrage from critics and patrons. Called a Fauve-addled creator of "monstrosities", Walkowitz endured a initial environment of ridicule. The 1907 exhibit attracted more notoriety than sales, but Walkowitz knew that despite the jeers, the real joke would ultimately be on those who kept laughing at the changing scene in American art.
Fortunately, the rising modernist tide brought Walkowitz better feedback for his depictions of the great Isadora, along with his Manhattan skyscrapers and other vivid watercolor city scenes. He participated in the 1913 Armory Show, and he was one of the founders and eventual Director and Vice President of the Society of Independent Artists. He also exhibited at Alfred Stieglitz's well-known 291 Gallery, and in the 1940s he convinced over 100 of his fellow artists, including Max Weber, to produce various portraits of him—on canvas, paper or as sculpture—the group of which formed the Brooklyn Museum's One Hundred Artists and Walkowitz.
Later Years and Legacy
In his later years, Walkowitz penned autobiographical writings and was the Smithsonian Archives of American Art's first oral history interviewee in 1958. He took part in key retrospectives, and he was given the Marjorie Peabody Waite Award as a distinguished elder artist by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Walkowitz died in January of 1965 at the age of 86, following a long career and a life devoted to his own feisty credo: "I was a radical. I was fearless. There were no 'ifs' with me...."
Sources
- Speaking of Art: Selections from the Archives of American Art Oral History Collection -- Smithsonian Archives of American Art (Winterhouse Editions, 2008)
- Line Dance: Abraham Walkowitz's Drawings of Isadora Duncan -- University of Delaware Art Museums
- Abraham Walkowitz: Isadora Duncan Drawings -- Cleveland Museum of Art Collection
