Sacha Kolin

American, 1911 - 1981

(not assigned)Paris, France, Europe

(not assigned)USA, North America

BiographyBorn in Paris, France in 1911. Died in New York, NY in 1981

About Sacha Kolin
By Lisa Thaler
lisathaler@sachakolin.com
© 2009 All Rights Reserved

Sacha Kolin (pron. ko-LEEN) believed that she was destined to become an artist. While recuperating from a childhood illness, Sacha received drawing materials from her parents. Immediately, she recognized her calling. Sacha was born in Paris May 9, 1911 to Malwina Slobodianiuk and Julius Kolin, a mechanical engineering student at Vienna's Technische Universität. Julius was in Paris at the time to test his airplane propeller designs at the Laboratoire du Champ-de-Mars under Gustave Eiffel's supervision. Sacha grew up in Vienna and studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule (Innenarchitektur with Oskar Strnad) and the Academy of Fine Arts (sculpture and drawing). She was one of few women to exhibit in the annuals of the Secession and the Künstlerhaus.
In 1933, Sacha returned to Paris to study in the atelier of Naum Aronson, formerly a stonecarver for Auguste Rodin. Her sculptures were then traditional expressive busts of men, women, and children, and likened to those of Charles Despiau. In her drawings, she endeavored to apply Rodin's method of preserving spontaneity, the first impression, with well-formed figuration. This facility for spare yet full gestural drawing, saying the most with the least, is a hallmark of Kolin's graphic work. She exhibited at several annual Paris Salons and in 1935, was elected Societaire, the youngest full member, of the Nationale Societe des Beaux Arts.
In December 1936, Sacha, age 25, and her parents immigrated to the United States and settled in New York City. Three months later, the artist held her first one-person exhibition "Modern Sculptures and Sketches" at Rockefeller Center's P.E.D.A.C. Galleries. At the 1940 New York World's Fair, she was one of 42 émigrés; artists among Josef Albers, Werner Drewes, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Amédée Ozenfant, represented in "New Americans of Friendship House."
From the 1940s, Sacha was inspired by American Indian lore and iconography. She began to incorporate native dance imagery and create flat-plane abstract compositions in a native palette. In the 1950s, she hosted a color workshop in her New York studio with Bauhaus-trained Hannes Beckmann and developed further in a non-objective style.
Music was another passion, and Sacha sought to convey a lyrical expressiveness in her canvases. She participated in art exhibitions with a musical theme and organized concerts in conjunction with art shows. Her work of this time, and in particular her watercolors, is likened to that of Kandinsky and Klee, her later calligraphic drawings and painted sculpture to Arp, Calder, and Miró.
In the 1960s, Sacha exhibited Optical Art paintings, some created in series of four canvases of up to 3 x 3 feet each and hung horizontally or vertically. Although proficient in numerous media, she considered herself primarily a sculptor. Her three-dimensional works became increasingly geometric, often monochromatic, and based on the triangle. The triangle as a leitmotif and titled references to flight recalls Sacha's paternal legacy in aeronautics and her experiences as a war-era refugee. Variations on interlocking and leaning triangles and other elemental forms address weight and balance, tension and grace.
To heighten the illusion of a precarious balance, the artist used reflective materials and highly polished metal finishes. In 1973, Sacha's monumental aluminum sculpture Drawing in the Sky #1 was installed during her one-person exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, and it remains on outdoor display to this day.
The artist experimented with machine-tooled sculpture techniques and was among the first members of E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology), which arranges collaborations between artists and engineers. She was a friend of mail artist Ray Johnson and an early participant in the New York Correspondance [sic] School. Sacha also joined Artists Equity Association, League of Present Day Artists (serving as Treasurer in 1954), and National Association of Women Artists. Her career history includes 19 one-person exhibitions and over 125 group shows. Sacha Kolin is represented currently in over 100 museum and private collections in the United States and abroad. In June 2008, family historian Lisa Thaler wrote Look Up: The Life and Art of Sacha Kolin (Midmarch Arts Press).

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