Sacha Kolin (1911-1981)
mixed media on paper, signed,35x50 cm
framed
Sacha Kolin (1911-1981) was a painter and sculptor from New York, N.Y. Kolin was born in Paris, France in 1911. She grew up in Vienna, Austria, attending the Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule (1930) and the Academy of Fine Arts (1931-32). In 1933 she moved to Paris, and studied with Naoum Aronson (himself a stone carver for Auguste Rodin). In 1935, she became the youngest full member of the Nationale Societe des Beaux Arts. In December 1936, she immigrated to New York and participated in many one-person and group exhibitions. She was the recipient in 1973 of a Mark Rothko Foundation grant award.
Look Up: The Life and Art of Sacha Kolin
“Depar¬ture” is a paint¬ing that cap¬ti¬vates a woman at an art show in Win-net¬ka, Illi¬nois in 1998. Ten years lat¬er, that woman, Lisa Thaler, pub¬lish¬es a book about the artist, Sacha Kolin (1911 – 1981), whose work is rep¬re-sent¬ed in a num¬ber of muse¬um col¬lec¬tions but whose name is hard-ly known.
Despite numer¬ous exhi¬bi¬tions, Sacha Kolin had nev¬er achieved much recog¬ni¬tion, even dur¬ing her life¬time. Nev¬er¬the¬less, the book is end¬less¬ly absorb¬ing, giv¬en the rich details the author has gath¬ered. Writ¬ing in a con-cise jour¬nal¬is¬tic style, Thaler’s gene¬ol¬o¬gist recre¬ates the artist’s life and milieu and doc¬u¬ments her art. Thaler researched the artist glob¬al¬ly, reach-ing into her past in Vien¬na, from where her par¬ents fled, to Israel, where many rel¬a¬tives had set¬tled, and into all Sacha’s pro¬fes¬sion¬al con¬tacts. Exam¬in¬ing archival mate¬r¬i¬al, perus¬ing gallery and muse¬um inven¬to¬ries, inter¬view¬ing friends, acquain¬tances, cred¬i¬tors, Lisa Thaler left no source untapped to cap¬ture the char¬ac¬ter and per¬son¬al¬i¬ty of her subject.
Sacha Kolin strug¬gled to live well on mea¬ger means. She helped to cre¬ate the mar¬ket for wealthy patrons to donate art works to uni¬ver¬si¬ty art col¬lec-tions, where¬by the patrons receive tax ben¬e¬fits. She pur¬sued donors in order to sell paint¬ings to sup¬port her¬self and her father. The author “paints” a por¬trait of Sacha, who arrived in New York with her par¬ents in 1936 at the age of twen¬ty-five. Her dis¬place¬ment and refugee sta¬tus didn’t seem to affect her spir¬it. Her peren¬ni¬al opti¬mism is reflect¬ed in the book title, tak¬en from her paint¬ing “Look Up: The Sun is Shin¬ing.” Sacha worked in sev¬er¬al medi¬ums: pen and ink, water¬col¬or, and oils as well as sculp¬ture. Thaler includes fas¬ci¬nat¬ing details about Sacha’s father, an engi-neer who had designed inno¬v¬a¬tive pro¬pellers that were used in air¬planes and lat¬er in oth¬er machin¬ery. She makes a case that his designs inspired some of Sacha’s art. Active in the post- World War II art world of New York City, much of Sacha’s work ref¬er¬ences the pop¬u¬lar art styles of that period.
Thaler seems to feel oblig¬ed to men¬tion Sacha Kolin’s Jew¬ish iden¬ti¬ty — or lack there¬of— in the epi¬logue: “…She applied her Jew¬ish sen¬si¬bil¬i¬ty to a range of cul¬tur¬al motifs and aes¬theth¬ic styles, includ¬ing a belief in jus¬tice and equal¬i¬ty, a com¬mit¬ment to tikkun olam [repair of the world], a sense of imper¬ma¬nence, and a long¬ing to return to a (if not the) home¬land.” (True as that may be, Sacha chose to have her remains cre¬mat¬ed through the Trin¬i-ty Church Cre¬ma¬to¬ria.) Thaler came to think of Sacha as the ulti¬mate “sur-vivor.” It remains to be seen if she is suc¬cess¬ful in res¬cu¬ing her from obscurity.
