Samuel Bookatz
Encyclopedia
Samuel Bookatz was a prolific painter who defied the demands of his blue collar
, Orthodox Jewish
upbringing to study art in the United States and Europe. Bookatz painted in a variety of styles: for commissions with presidential, military, political, and civic portraits; for murals during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Federal Art Project
; for religious and secular fresco
es; and mostly for his own vision. In his private art, he developed from a realistic
style to impressionist
paintings, later to figurative expressionist
and to increasingly abstract expressionist
themes.
.
Bookatz produced early work strong enough that one submission won the 1937 Prix de Rome
and allowed him to tour Europe studying art in London, Paris, and Rome for two years. That prize bestowed not only accolades for his work but a valuable free studio and complimentary access to all museums and educational facilities in Europe as a scholar. During that period, he exhibited at the American Academy of Rome, attended by King Victor Emmanuel
. During his European tour he encountered problems with dictator-era authorities, was expelled from a train for assisting a Jewish child, and was arrested for failing to stand in his window alcove while sketching an orating Benito Mussolini
. While in Europe he married Laurie Tridell of France after a whirlwind romance. She divorced him a year later when she was not permitted to accompany him in returning to the U.S.
Although his mother discarded his stored Cleveland artwork while he was overseas, Bookatz was able to mount a one-man show at the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1940 with the fruits of his European trip. Back in the U.S. he quickly developed a means for sustaining himself with art though portraits of prominent locals in 1940-41. One of these subjects, Cleveland Press
science writer David Deitz, was on the National Reserve Council and was a consultant to the surgeon general
. He inquired about Bookatz's lack of plans during a time of draft and war. Deitz made an introduction regarding a post President Roosevelt created "to commission an artist who would be attached to the National Medical Corps who would create murals depicting men in their line of duty."
Bookatz accepted the commission. His official enlistment was recalled by Jan Kenneth Herman, Navy Medical Department historian: "You're in the Navy. Report to the Navy Surgeon General in Washington. You're going to be an artist." He soon became FDR's personal painter and because of short supplies of office and studio space in wartime D.C., was ensconced in the White House in the Lincoln Bedroom for two years. He created official portraits of both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt
during this time. He wrote, "The best light I had was sitting on the edge of Lincoln's bed and painting with my easel propped up in front of me." His portraits of five admirals hang at the National Naval Medical Center
in Bethesda, Maryland
. He painted Vice Adm. Ross T. McIntire (Navy Surgeon General and President Roosevelt's personal physician) and Pennsylvania governor David L. Lawrence
as well.
In addition to increasingly impressionist still life and landscape paintings, and the realism of portraiture, Bookatz diversified his styles further: the murals were assignments as part of FDR's Federal Art Project of the Depression
era "and I felt I had to conform to the social realism that was popular at the time." At the close of the war, his anatomical studies at Harvard allowed him to work for a year in Oakland, California
, assisting surgeons with planning reconstructive facial surgery for injured military men.
Bookatz showed increasing interest in figurative expressionism in his personal artwork. From his non-commissioned paintings, he began submitting works to Washington's Corcoran Gallery
biennial exhibitions in 1945—a practice he continued through 1961—developing a style whereby his "figure drawings are formed out of a complex amalgam of generalized abstraction and painstakingly detailed figuration." In 1948 he was given a one-person exhibition at the Corcoran. In 1950 he was given a one-person exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution
.
In 1950, he met Joe Morgan, architect for the Marriott Corporation, based in Washington. The Marriott hotel chain was planning free-standing restaurants called the Hot Shoppes. Morgan commissioned Bookatz to create murals for all eight restaurants. The figurative expressionist scenes involved modern flower gardens with figures entwined. He also worked on increasingly abstract architectural details for temples, office buildings, and later frescoes for eight elder housing buildings by D.C. developer Joseph Della Ratta. In 1962 he developed, via a grant from the Ford Foundation
, set designs for the D.C. Arena Stage. The increasingly abstract styles of painting can be seen in his works acquired by such friends as military man Jack Gross, whose art estate was bequeathed to the Harrisburg Art Association, and Pearl S. Buck
.
Through these types of commissions, portraits, and architectural design, as well as occasional commercial endorsements such as a 1954 Crayola
Crayon ad in American Artist, Bookatz was able to circumvent the rigors of gallery showings and income through sales in those venues. This allowed him to develop his personal art as he wished, absent of saleability considerations. He could instead submit works to museums and occasional pieces to the New York gallery Monede. In his pursuit of works that spoke to him, he co-founded the Washington Abstraction Group with Arshile Gorky
.
In 1964, Bookatz married Helen Suzzann Meyer, and purchased a D.C. building to open a larger studio and the Bookatz Gallery. He later bought a different building in 1967 and again in 1973, always locating in D.C. Over the subsequent decades he worked in a style in which he moved from painting to painting in a single day, developing the canvasses over a period of time: "I can work on 12 canvasses in a one day ranging from realist to abstract." He showed less frequently in New York and other galleries, having his own display space in the building where his art studio was housed. He thereby amassed, over the decades, over 5,000 pieces. In 1999, he had a second one-person exhibition at the Corcoran.
After the turn of the century, as he passed age 90, Bookatz conducted a search with the assistance of the Corcoran for a commercial gallery to handle sales of the paintings. In 2006 he selected a gallery in the Cleveland area, a nod to his childhood city. Since his death at age 99, the vast majority of his paintings, numbering in the thousands, are being overseen by the Bookatz Foundation. Samuel Bookatz was survived by his wife, Sue. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery
in January 2010.
The portraits "adhere to the academic tradition—warm flesh tones and meticulous brush technique in accord with formal practice," while the non-portraits show a style of painting in "a broad sweeping fashion with spatula or palette knife," his pieces "combined wash and impasto
s or ink and pastel with emulsion seeking a luminous gem-like quality."
A review of a 1961 show at Monede Gallery, New York: "His mastery of drawing is apparent," Bookatz may have been a "newcomer to NY though by no means a beginner," "his paintings constitute a genuinely personal world and have modesty of conception and attitude." "Particular to Bookatz is the frequent graceful rhythm which runs through the figures and, more basically, through one painting, since several heads are merely ovals which are repeated below to suggest spirals. The color is never diverse and often green, gray, or blue."
Bookatz's "canvasses are filled with improvisational visual exchanges that are deeply reflective of the lessons of pre- and post-war abstraction." "Working simultaneously on nearly a dozen different paintings at a time, he moves back and forth between different styles, media, and subjects as if they were all pieces of the same complicated puzzle."
Blue-collar worker
A blue-collar worker is a member of the working class who performs manual labor. Blue-collar work may involve skilled or unskilled, manufacturing, mining, construction, mechanical, maintenance, technical installation and many other types of physical work...
, Orthodox Jewish
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...
upbringing to study art in the United States and Europe. Bookatz painted in a variety of styles: for commissions with presidential, military, political, and civic portraits; for murals during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Federal Art Project
Federal Art Project
The Federal Art Project was the visual arts arm of the Great Depression-era New Deal Works Progress Administration Federal One program in the United States. It operated from August 29, 1935, until June 30, 1943. Reputed to have created more than 200,000 separate works, FAP artists created...
; for religious and secular fresco
Fresco
Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...
es; and mostly for his own vision. In his private art, he developed from a realistic
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
style to impressionist
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
paintings, later to figurative expressionist
American Figurative Expressionism
According to Marilyn Stokstad, the art historian:-Early Expressionistic movements:Expressionistic movements before and after 1910 were developed by three artists' groups:• The Fauves • Die Brücke • Der Blaue Reiter...
and to increasingly abstract expressionist
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
themes.
Biography
Bookatz was the fourth of six children born in Philadelphia and soon moved to Cleveland with Russian immigrant parents who observed Orthodox Jewish practices. His father struggled to support the family as a carpenter. His mother refused to learn English after relocating from Lithuania to the U.S. His mother opposed Bookatz's early interest in art, preferring medical, law, or business training that would be more lucrative than the lower blue collar existence in which he was raised. He prevailed, defying his parents' wishes by working after high school graduation in a factory for three years while taking free art classes, finally saving enough to attend and graduate from the Cleveland School of Art. He won a Faculty prize that allowed him to study art at the Boston School of Fine Arts and anatomy at Harvard Medical SchoolHarvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
.
Bookatz produced early work strong enough that one submission won the 1937 Prix de Rome
Prix de Rome
The Prix de Rome was a scholarship for arts students, principally of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It was created, initially for painters and sculptors, in 1663 in France during the reign of Louis XIV. It was an annual bursary for promising artists having proved their talents by...
and allowed him to tour Europe studying art in London, Paris, and Rome for two years. That prize bestowed not only accolades for his work but a valuable free studio and complimentary access to all museums and educational facilities in Europe as a scholar. During that period, he exhibited at the American Academy of Rome, attended by King Victor Emmanuel
Victor Emmanuel III of Italy
Victor Emmanuel III was a member of the House of Savoy and King of Italy . In addition, he claimed the crowns of Ethiopia and Albania and claimed the titles Emperor of Ethiopia and King of Albania , which were unrecognised by the Great Powers...
. During his European tour he encountered problems with dictator-era authorities, was expelled from a train for assisting a Jewish child, and was arrested for failing to stand in his window alcove while sketching an orating Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
. While in Europe he married Laurie Tridell of France after a whirlwind romance. She divorced him a year later when she was not permitted to accompany him in returning to the U.S.
Although his mother discarded his stored Cleveland artwork while he was overseas, Bookatz was able to mount a one-man show at the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1940 with the fruits of his European trip. Back in the U.S. he quickly developed a means for sustaining himself with art though portraits of prominent locals in 1940-41. One of these subjects, Cleveland Press
Cleveland Press
The Cleveland Press was a daily American newspaper published in Cleveland, Ohio from November 2, 1878, through June 17, 1982. From 1928 to 1966, the paper's editor was Louis Seltzer....
science writer David Deitz, was on the National Reserve Council and was a consultant to the surgeon general
Surgeon General of the United States
The Surgeon General of the United States is the operational head of the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and thus the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the federal government...
. He inquired about Bookatz's lack of plans during a time of draft and war. Deitz made an introduction regarding a post President Roosevelt created "to commission an artist who would be attached to the National Medical Corps who would create murals depicting men in their line of duty."
Bookatz accepted the commission. His official enlistment was recalled by Jan Kenneth Herman, Navy Medical Department historian: "You're in the Navy. Report to the Navy Surgeon General in Washington. You're going to be an artist." He soon became FDR's personal painter and because of short supplies of office and studio space in wartime D.C., was ensconced in the White House in the Lincoln Bedroom for two years. He created official portraits of both Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
during this time. He wrote, "The best light I had was sitting on the edge of Lincoln's bed and painting with my easel propped up in front of me." His portraits of five admirals hang at the National Naval Medical Center
National Naval Medical Center
The National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, USA — commonly known as the Bethesda Naval Hospital — was for decades the flagship of the United States Navy's system of medical centers. A federal institution, it conducted medical and dental research as well as providing health care for...
in Bethesda, Maryland
Bethesda, Maryland
Bethesda is a census designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House , which in turn took its name from Jerusalem's Pool of Bethesda...
. He painted Vice Adm. Ross T. McIntire (Navy Surgeon General and President Roosevelt's personal physician) and Pennsylvania governor David L. Lawrence
David L. Lawrence
David Leo Lawrence was an American politician who served as the 37th Governor of Pennsylvania from 1959 to 1963. He is to date the only mayor of Pittsburgh to be elected Governor of Pennsylvania. Previously, he had been the mayor of Pittsburgh from 1946 through 1959...
as well.
In addition to increasingly impressionist still life and landscape paintings, and the realism of portraiture, Bookatz diversified his styles further: the murals were assignments as part of FDR's Federal Art Project of the Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
era "and I felt I had to conform to the social realism that was popular at the time." At the close of the war, his anatomical studies at Harvard allowed him to work for a year in Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
, assisting surgeons with planning reconstructive facial surgery for injured military men.
Bookatz showed increasing interest in figurative expressionism in his personal artwork. From his non-commissioned paintings, he began submitting works to Washington's Corcoran Gallery
Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...
biennial exhibitions in 1945—a practice he continued through 1961—developing a style whereby his "figure drawings are formed out of a complex amalgam of generalized abstraction and painstakingly detailed figuration." In 1948 he was given a one-person exhibition at the Corcoran. In 1950 he was given a one-person exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
.
In 1950, he met Joe Morgan, architect for the Marriott Corporation, based in Washington. The Marriott hotel chain was planning free-standing restaurants called the Hot Shoppes. Morgan commissioned Bookatz to create murals for all eight restaurants. The figurative expressionist scenes involved modern flower gardens with figures entwined. He also worked on increasingly abstract architectural details for temples, office buildings, and later frescoes for eight elder housing buildings by D.C. developer Joseph Della Ratta. In 1962 he developed, via a grant from the Ford Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....
, set designs for the D.C. Arena Stage. The increasingly abstract styles of painting can be seen in his works acquired by such friends as military man Jack Gross, whose art estate was bequeathed to the Harrisburg Art Association, and Pearl S. Buck
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu , was an American writer who spent most of her time until 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. in 1931 and 1932, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932...
.
Through these types of commissions, portraits, and architectural design, as well as occasional commercial endorsements such as a 1954 Crayola
Crayola
Crayola is a brand of artists' supplies manufactured by Crayola LLC, which was founded in 1885 as Binney & Smith. It is best known for its crayons...
Crayon ad in American Artist, Bookatz was able to circumvent the rigors of gallery showings and income through sales in those venues. This allowed him to develop his personal art as he wished, absent of saleability considerations. He could instead submit works to museums and occasional pieces to the New York gallery Monede. In his pursuit of works that spoke to him, he co-founded the Washington Abstraction Group with Arshile Gorky
Arshile Gorky
Arshile Gorky was an Armenian-born American painter who had a seminal influence on Abstract Expressionism. As such, his works were often speculated to have been informed by the suffering and loss he experienced of the Armenian genocide.-Early life:...
.
In 1964, Bookatz married Helen Suzzann Meyer, and purchased a D.C. building to open a larger studio and the Bookatz Gallery. He later bought a different building in 1967 and again in 1973, always locating in D.C. Over the subsequent decades he worked in a style in which he moved from painting to painting in a single day, developing the canvasses over a period of time: "I can work on 12 canvasses in a one day ranging from realist to abstract." He showed less frequently in New York and other galleries, having his own display space in the building where his art studio was housed. He thereby amassed, over the decades, over 5,000 pieces. In 1999, he had a second one-person exhibition at the Corcoran.
After the turn of the century, as he passed age 90, Bookatz conducted a search with the assistance of the Corcoran for a commercial gallery to handle sales of the paintings. In 2006 he selected a gallery in the Cleveland area, a nod to his childhood city. Since his death at age 99, the vast majority of his paintings, numbering in the thousands, are being overseen by the Bookatz Foundation. Samuel Bookatz was survived by his wife, Sue. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, is a military cemetery in the United States of America, established during the American Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House, formerly the estate of the family of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's wife Mary Anna Lee, a great...
in January 2010.
Reviews and commentary
"Samuel Bookatz has recently made a radical shift in his point of view toward painting... and has entered a period of experimentation, intensifying his color and breaking up his line. In a sense, he has made his painting more impersonal, the better to express his emotional response to what he sees."The portraits "adhere to the academic tradition—warm flesh tones and meticulous brush technique in accord with formal practice," while the non-portraits show a style of painting in "a broad sweeping fashion with spatula or palette knife," his pieces "combined wash and impasto
Impasto
In English, the borrowed Italian word impasto most commonly refers to a technique used in painting, where paint is laid on an area of the surface very thickly, usually thickly enough that the brush or painting-knife strokes are visible. Paint can also be mixed right on the canvas...
s or ink and pastel with emulsion seeking a luminous gem-like quality."
A review of a 1961 show at Monede Gallery, New York: "His mastery of drawing is apparent," Bookatz may have been a "newcomer to NY though by no means a beginner," "his paintings constitute a genuinely personal world and have modesty of conception and attitude." "Particular to Bookatz is the frequent graceful rhythm which runs through the figures and, more basically, through one painting, since several heads are merely ovals which are repeated below to suggest spirals. The color is never diverse and often green, gray, or blue."
Bookatz's "canvasses are filled with improvisational visual exchanges that are deeply reflective of the lessons of pre- and post-war abstraction." "Working simultaneously on nearly a dozen different paintings at a time, he moves back and forth between different styles, media, and subjects as if they were all pieces of the same complicated puzzle."
Selected Solo Exhibitions
- 1938 American Academy in Rome
- 1939 Academia Colarossi Gallery, Paris
- 1940 Cleveland Institute of Art
- 1948 Corcoran Gallery, D.C.
- 1950 Smithsonian Institution
- 1998 Cleveland Institute of Art
- 1999 Corcoran Gallery
Selected prizes, awards, and commissions
- 1937 Prix de Rome
- 1940 Presidential Artist in Residence
- 1952 Corcoran 1st prize
In permanent collections
- Smithsonian InstitutionSmithsonian InstitutionThe Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
- Library of CongressLibrary of CongressThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
- Corcoran Gallery, D.C.
- The Phillips Collection, D.C.
- Hirshhorn MuseumHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture GardenThe Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...
, D.C. - Cleveland Museum of ArtCleveland Museum of ArtThe Cleveland Museum of Art is an art museum situated in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on Cleveland's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian art, the museum houses a diverse permanent collection of more than 43,000...
- Butler Institute of American ArtButler Institute of American ArtThe Butler Institute of American Art, located on Wick Avenue in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, was the first museum dedicated exclusively to American art. Established by local industrialist and philanthropist Joseph G. Butler, Jr., the museum has been operating pro bono since 1919...
, Youngstown OH - Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia
- Pennsylvania State CapitolPennsylvania State CapitolThe Pennsylvania State Capitol is the seat of government for the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and is in downtown Harrisburg. It was designed in 1902 in a Beaux-Arts style with Renaissance themes throughout...
- Navy Medical Museum, murals and portraits