Irving Kriesberg

American, 1919 - 2009

(not assigned)New York, New York, USA

(not assigned)Chicago, Illinois, USA, North America

SchoolAbstraction

BiographyBorn Chicago, Illinois , 1919
Irving Kriesberg studied at the Chicago Art Institute and at New York University. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright grant, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, NY State, Ford Foundation, Gottleib Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. He has had solo exhibitions at Graham Modern Gallery, Dintenfass Gallery, Ingber Gallery, Kumar Gallery (India), the Cincinnati Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Chicago Art Institute, the Everson Museum, Yale Museum of Art, the Rose Art Museum, and the Jewish Museum. His work is in the Museum of Modern Art, Detroit Institute, Corcoran Gallery, Whitney Museum, Cincinnati Museum and Baltimore Museum. Mr. Kriesberg has taught at Skidmore College, Yale, Columbia, and Washington Universities, and was Director of the State-wide Honors Studio Program of the State University of New York. He has written three books: Looking at Pictures; Art, The Visual Experience; and Working With Color. (Source: Website of The International School of Art in Umbria, Italy , Accessed July 15, 2004)

Chicago native Irving Kriesberg studied painting at the University of Chicago and The Art Institute of Chicago where he received his B.F.A. After graduation he traveled to Mexico where he studied for three years at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas in Mexico City before coming to New York. While in New York, Kriesberg was included in the landmark 1952 exhibition 15 Americans at the Museum of Modern Art, where he exhibited seven tempera on masonite paintings. Organized by Dorothy Miller, the exhibition also included works by artistic luminaries Jackson Pollock, William Baziotes, Clifford Still, and Mark Rothko.

Kriesberg's work during the 1950s, which includes the painting Dancer with Grey Still Life, expresses his interest in Surrealism and the School of Paris. It also reflects aspects of his personal life-during this time, Kriesberg and his young family were experiencing financial difficulties. Kriesberg only worked in tempera on masonite between 1948 and 1952, painting approximately 30-50 temperas in this time.

Between 1946 and the present, Kriesberg has participated in over 20 solo and museum exhibitions. He has also received numerous awards and grants including the Lee Krasner Award for Lifetime Achievement, two Ford Foundation Grants, two Pollock-Krasner Awards, a Fulbright Fellowship to India, and a National Endowment for the Arts Award. In addition to painting, Kriesberg has written three books, made videos and films, and has been a guest critic, curator and teacher throughout the United States and India.

Kriesberg's work is included in many public collections, including the Baltimore Museum; the Cincinnati Museum of Art; the Butler Museum of Art, Youngstown; the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

Person TypeIndividual

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