Samuel Bookatz

Samuel Bookatz (October 3, 1910 – November 16, 2009) 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 religious and secular frescoes; 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.

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 School.

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 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. 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." 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. In 1962 he developed, via a grant from the Ford Foundation, set designs for the D.C. Arena Stage.

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.

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 impastos 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."

Exhibitions and awards

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 Institution Library of Congress Corcoran Gallery, D.C. The Phillips Collection, D.C. Hirshhorn Museum, D.C. Cleveland Museum of Art Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown OH Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Pennsylvania State Capitol Navy Medical Museum, murals and portraits