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Lot description
LEON BERKOWITZ (AMERICAN, 1919-1987) "FROST, FIRE, AND ICE" ABSTRACT PAINTING, oil on canvas, an energetic composition with broad abstract polychrome brushstrokes. Titled in the margin and signed verso. Housed under glass in a modern frame, not stretched. Third quarter 20th century. 27" x 31 1/2" canvas, 31" x 36 3/4" OA. Catalogue Note: Leon Berkowitz (1919-1987) was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Hasidic parents who immigrated to the United States from Hungary. His interest in art developed early in his life while attending public school. He studied art and education at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and pursued further study at the Art Students League in New York City, the Corcoran College of Art and Design, and the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris. During World War II, Berkowitz served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1945, and while stationed at Camp Lee, Virginia, he participated in a psychiatric program incorporating art therapy and psychological approaches such as Gestalt and Rorschach, all of which greatly influenced his developing aesthetic. After the war, Berkowitz returned to Washington, DC to teach art in public schools and in 1948 earned a Master of Arts from George Washington University. In 1945 he, together with and his first wife, the poet Ida Fox Berkowitz, and artist Helmut Kern founded the Washington Workshop Center for the Arts, an organization which offered classes, workspace, and exhibition space which became a key gathering place for artists including Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Gene Davis, who would later be associated with the Washington Color School (though Berkowitz personally resisted that label). The center sponsored a retrospective of Willem de Kooning in 1953, fostering connections between Washington and New York artists and critics. Following the closure of the center in 1956, the Berkowitzes embarked on an extended period of travel and artistic development abroad, spending nearly a decade in Europe including stays in Spain and Wales before returning to Washington in 1964. Berkowitz's first solo museum exhibition was held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1966; in 1969 he joined the faculty of the Corcoran School of Art, later serving as chairman of its painting department while continuing to paint and exhibit widely. His work is represented in major museum collections across the United States, including the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Phillips Collection, the High Museum of Art, and many others. Berkowitz died of cancer in Washington, DC in 1987.