Ad Reinhardt Biography
Adolph Dietrich Friedrich Reinhardt, known as Ad Reinhardt (Buffalo, December 24, 1913 – New York, August 30, 1967), was an American painter, one of the greatest exponents of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. He lived in Buffalo with his family of Russian and German Jewish immigrants, who soon moved to New York. From 1931 to 1935 he studied literature and art history at Columbia University under the wing of the well-known art historian Meyer Schapiro, who introduced him to left-wing political activity which he will maintain in the future. He began to paint, soon winning numerous awards. He also attended painting courses at Columbia's Teachers College, and after obtaining his diploma he began studying painting at both the National Academy of Design and the American Artists School, where he met the progressive artists Francis Criss and Carl Holty, who influenced him with Cubism and European-style constructivism. After his studies, from 1936 to 1940, he obtained a job at the Federal Art Project, Visual Arts section of the Works Progress Administration, the major agency of the New Deal. Here he met the artists Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky. After completing his work at the Federal Art Project, he became a graphic artist, cartoonist and freelance reporter, in particular for the PM newspaper from 1942 to 1947. In 1942 he became a member of the artistic group American Abstract Artists, with whom he exhibited for a decade in the major galleries of art, including the Peggy Guggenheim Gallery. Shortly afterwards he began a long collaboration with the gallery owner Betty Parsons, who dedicated frequent solo exhibitions to him as early as 1946. He also dedicated himself to writing, particularly regarding the work of many of his colleagues. His sober and precise writing, as well as his pictorial works, did not fail to generate controversy, even after decades. Always interested in writing and oriental art, from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, he undertook numerous trips to the Asian continent in countries such as Japan, India, Persia, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and Jordan. After completing further studies at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, and upon discharge from military service, he became an art teacher at Brooklyn College in 1947, where he taught until 1967, the year of his death in his studio in New York. York due to a massive heart attack. He also taught at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, the University of Wyoming, Yale University and Hunter College in New York. The artist was also part of the 1950 Metropolitan Museum of Art protest group known as “The Irascibles.” His works are preserved at the Pace Gallery in New York.
