Acclaimed New York-based artist Robert Moskowitz, best known for creating enigmatic art pieces, passed away this week at the age of 88 after battling Parkinson’s.
Moskowitz typically painted pictures that include familiar symbols and imagery, such as the New York skyline. While many critics of Moskowitz have attempted to connect the artist’s work to a particular movement, such as Pop Art and Minimalism, throughout his career, he demonstrated an ability to work with many aesthetic styles.
Today, Moskowitz is most commonly aligned with New Image Painting, a tendency formalized by a 1978 Whitney Museum show of the same name. The exhibition surveyed artists whose imagery “is radically manipulated through scale, material, placement and color,” allowing it to be “released from that which it is representing.” Moskowitz figured in the show alongside Jennifer Bartlett, Neil Jenney, and Susan Rothenberg, all of whom rose to fame at a time when both figuration and painting had been pronounced dead by many critics.
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Robert’s most famous work, titled “Swimmer,” was created in 1977. The painting features a lone swimmer who can be seen hopelessly swimming across a deep blue canvas, appearing lost and forever traveling.
“I always have an image. I might not know exactly what it means, but you could say the image is the idea,” Moskowitz said in a 1988 interview. “First, it’s intuitive—I’ll want to paint a particular image. Later, I find out what the image means to me, usually after the painting is finished. I’m never quite sure why I realize one image or another.”
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Moskowitz was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1935. In his early life, Robert entered an engineering program at the Mechanics Institute of Manhattan. After being encouraged to work as a technical illustrator, Mosowitz decided to attend the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he studied under the famed Abstract Expressionist painter Adolph Gottlieb.
Robert’s big break came in 1962 after his artwork was featured in the 1961 Museum of Modern Art show “The Art of Assemblage.”
Moskowitz’s most recent solo exhibition, which took place at Peter Freeman, Inc., was unveiled just days before his death. The exhibition showcased paintings he had created over the past four decades, featuring a diverse array of imagery.
Rest in peace!
