Harold Bruder

Harold Jacob Bruder (born August 31, 1930) is an American realist painter. In 1984, he was honored with a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He is a former professor of art, working with the Kansas City Art Institute, Pratt Institute, National Academy of Design, Aspen Art Museum, and Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY). He served as the Chairman of the Art Department at CUNY, where he taught painting and drawing for 30 years, retiring in 1995, as Professor Emeritus.

Personal background Bruder was born in 1930 in Bronx, New York. He studied at High School of Music and Art and Cooper Union School of Art in New York City. He studied singing privately during this period and those experiences later influenced his writings and lectures on early opera singers. He graduated from Cooper Union in 1951.

Professional background After graduating from college, Bruder worked as a graphic designer and art director in Manhattan for 12 years, while painting privately and occasionally exhibiting. During this time, he studied printmaking at the Pratt Graphic Art Center.

In 1962, Bruder's first one-person show of genre paintings, derived from family photographs at the Robert Isaacson Gallery drew considerable attention in the press and art magazines. In 1963, his work was included in the Corcoran Gallery of Art biennial art exhibition in Washington, D.C., and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts annual art exhibition in Philadelphia.

In 1963, Bruder moved to Kansas City, Missouri with his family, and became Chairman of the Graphic Design Department at the Kansas City Art Institute. He taught painting the second year and exhibited at the Art Institute in 1964, as well as the prestigious Durlacher Bros. Gallery (owned by Robert Isaacson) in New York City.

In 1965, Bruder returned to New York from Kansas City. He subsequently joined the faculty of the Fashion Institute of Technology, Pratt Institute, and Queens College of the City University of New York, teaching in the art departments. While he left the Fashion Institute and Pratt Institute after one year, he continued working with CUNY for over 30 years.

In the summer of 1967, Bruder taught at the Aspen School of Contemporary Art in Aspen, Colorado.

Bruder's work was featured in numerous exhibits over the next few years that focused on "New Realism". In 1970, he was one of the original group of realist painters in the Whitney Museum of American Art's "22 Realists", along with Chuck Close, Audrey Flack, and Philip Pearlstein.

In the late 1970s, he began "The Vault Series", a group of six large paintings of draperies stretched across a wall that were exhibited at the Queens Museum of Art in 1982, and later at the Armstrong Gallery in New York in 1984. The reviews commented on Bruder's concern with renaissance-like tactility, air, and light, comparing Bruder with Titian and Michelangelo.

Over the next decade, Bruder continued exhibiting regularly at Durlacher Bros., Armstrong Gallery, and Forum Gallery, as well as in numerous museum and gallery group exhibitions throughout the United States.

In 1965, he returned to New York from Kansas City. He joined the faculty of Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY). He taught painting and drawing there for 30 years, serving as Chairman of the Art Department in the early 1980s, retiring in 1995, as Professor Emeritus.

After retirement from CUNY, Bruder briefly joined the staff at the National Academy of Design in New York City.

Public collections In 2004, a mini-retrospective covering 40 years of Bruder's work was held at the Mitchell Algus Gallery in New York. Public collections include the following.

Hirshhorn Museum of the Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. University of New Mexico Art Museum Sheldon Museum of Art of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln New Jersey State Museum Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey Goddard Art Center, Ardmore, Oklahoma Palm Springs Desert Museum Albert List Foundation

Art exhibitions

Solo exhibitions 1962: Robert Isaacson Gallery, New York City 1964: Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri 1964: Durlacher Bros., New York City 1967: Durlacher Bros., New York City 1968: Forum Gallery, New York City 1969: Owen Gallery, Denver, Colorado 1969: Forum Gallery, New York City 1972: Forum Gallery, New York City 1976: Forum Gallery, New York City 1979: William & Mary College, Williamsburg, Virginia 1979: Forum Gallery, New York City 1982: "The Vault Series" Queens Museum of Art, Flushing, New York 1984: "The Vault Series" Armstrong Gallery, New York City 1986: Armstrong Gallery, New York City 1988: Contemporary Realist Gallery, San Francisco, California 2004: "Selected Paintings 1963-2003" Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York City 2005: "Time & the Tabletop" Queens College Art Center, Flushing, New York

Group exhibitions 1963: "Pennsylvania Academy Annual" 1963: "9 Realist Painters" Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York City 1963: "Corcoran Biennial" Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 1964: "Modern Realism & Surrealism" American Federation of Arts 1965: "Contemporaries 1" Gallery of Modern Art, New York City 1965: "The Painter & the Photograph" University of New Mexico 1967: "Environment" Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York City 1970: "22 Realists" Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City 1970: "Paintings From the Photo" Riverside Museum, New York City 1970: "New-Realism" St. Cloud State College, St. Cloud, Minnesota 1972: "Painters of Land & Sky", Colgate University 1973: "A Sense of Place" University of Nebraska–Lincoln 1973: "The Realist Revival" New York City Cultural Center 1973: "American Realist Painting" Espace Cardi, Paris, France 1974: "Aspects of the Figure" Cleveland Museum of Art 1974: "Living American Artists & The Figure" University of Pennsylvania 1974: "The Figure in Recent American Painting" Westminster College 1975: "Candid Painting" DeCordoba Museum, Boston, Massachusetts 1975: "Portrait Painting" Allan Frumkin Gallery, New York City 1976: "American Art Today" University of Virginia Museum of Art 1976: "This Land is My Land" New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey 1976: "American Family Portraits" Philadelphia Museum of Art 1976: "Liturgical Arts" The Civic Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1976: "Urban Aesthetics" Queens Museum of Art, Flushing, New York 1978: American Academy of Arts & Letters, New York City 1979: "Things Seen" University of Nebraska–Lincoln 1983: "Painting New York" Museum of the City of New York, New York City 1983: "The Figure Observed" University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 1984: "9 Realist Painters Revisited" Robert Schoelkopf Gallery, New York City 1985: "Survival of the Fittest" Ingber Gallery, New York City 1985: Art Institute of Boston, Boston, Massachusetts 1985: Minneapolis College of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota 1986: "Movietone Muse" One Penn Plaza, New York City 1987: "Visions of America" ACA Gallery, New York City 1987: "American Art Today" Florida International University, Miami, Florida 1988: "Triumph of Virtue" National Academy of Design, New York City 1989: Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio 1989: "University & the Arts" Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 1990: "Objects Observed" Gallery Henoch, New York City 1992: Lillian Heidenberg Gallery, New York City 1996: National Academy of Design, New York City 1996: Gremillion & Co., Houston, Texas 2002: "Summer Exhibit" Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York City 2008: "Five Views to the Landscape" Riverrun Gallery, Lambertville, New Jersey 2008: "An Exhibition of East Coast Landscapes" Fieldstone Gallery, Ramsey, New Jersey

Honors and awards 1974: CUNY Faculty Research Award 1979: American Academy of Arts & Letters Award 1979: CUNY Faculty Research Award 1984: CUNY Faculty Research Award 1985: National Endowment for the Arts: Visual Arts Fellowship 1987: Queens College Faculty-in-Residence Award 1988: CUNY Faculty Research Award