Syd Solomon

Syd Solomon (1917-2004) was an accomplished American abstract painter whose luminous atmospheric works place him among the notable voices of postwar American art. Born in Pennsylvania, Solomon studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1935 to 1938, receiving the academic foundation that would inform his mature career. His artistic development was interrupted in 1940 when he enlisted in the military, and during the Second World War he contributed to the design of camouflage for the California coast and later served with the Corps in London. This wartime experience with the visual manipulation of terrain and structure gave him an unusually deep engagement with the relationship between color, form, and perception that would inform his later abstract paintings.

At the close of the war, Solomon enrolled at l'École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1945, further deepening his artistic training within the great European tradition. Beginning in the 1950s, Solomon and his wife Annie divided their time between residences in East Hampton, New York, and Sarasota, Florida, an unusual arrangement that gave him access to two of the most vital American artistic communities of his era. While in Sarasota, Solomon began to exhibit his work at the Ringling Museum of Art, quickly establishing his reputation within the Florida art community. By the 1960s he had progressed to exhibiting at prestigious institutions worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Clearwater Museum of Art in Florida, and the National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C.

Solomon was also a renowned teacher, establishing his own school in Florida, the Institute of Fine Art at New College. He additionally taught at the Pittsburgh Art Institute, the Sarasota School of Art, and the University of Illinois at Urbana, mentoring generations of younger American painters. He received several awards throughout his career, including Painting of the Year from both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the 13th New England Annual. Solomon's work can be found today at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the High Museum in Atlanta, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum, where his atmospheric abstractions remain valued contributions to American painting of his generation.