Miriam Laufer

Miriam Laufer (November 15, 1918 – October 6, 1980) was an American artist.[1] Laufer is best known for her paintings of women, as well as her paintings in abstract expressionist, geometric abstraction, and pop art styles. In addition, she was an early participant in the feminist art movement starting in the 1960s. She also worked as a calligrapher, illustrator, graphic designer and teacher.

Miriam Laufer
Born
Miriam Ickowitz

(1918-11-15)November 15, 1918
Lodz, Poland
DiedOctober 6, 1980(1980-10-06) (aged 61)
New York, New York
NationalityAmerican
EducationBezalel Art School, Brooklyn College
Known forPainting
MovementAbstract expressionism, Geometric Abstraction, and Pop Art

Early life and education

Miriam Laufer[2] was born in Lodz, Poland on November 15, 1918 to Sara Perl Ickowitz and Heinrich Ickowitz.[3] Three years later her family moved to Berlin, Germany, and shortly after her father abandoned the family. Her mother placed Miriam and her brother into a culturally and academically progressive children's home in Berlin called Ahava.[4] While living at Ahava Laufer became involved in stage set design and was very active in their art studio. In 1934 Youth Aliyah helped the Jewish children's home, including Miriam, emigrated to Haifa, then part of Palestine.[5]

While in Haifa, Laufer studied painting with Zvi Mairovich as well as graphic design with Hermann Struck. She entered the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem in 1938 on a scholarship.[6] There she studied graphics with Joseph Budko and painting with Mordecai Ardon, who had studied at the Bauhaus. In 1941, after graduating from Bezalel, Laufer married Sigmund Laufer,[7] an artist she met while studying at Bezalel.

Miriam and Sigmund Laufer continued to work as artists after emigrating to New York City in 1947.[8] The couple had two daughters, Susan Bee (b.1952) and Abigail Laufer (b.1956).[9]

Career

In the mid 1940s Laufer worked as a professional designer in Tel Aviv, Israel. She created signs for the British Army in Hebrew, Polish, Arabic, Greek, Urdu, French, and English using her graphic expertise. After her move to America, Laufer used her artistic training to work in various commercial art field including illustration, graphic design, and calligraphy.[10] From 1961-1963 she worked as a teaching assistant for the artists Samuel Adler and Leo Manso in the New York University art department.[11]

Exhibitions

Between 1959-2016 there have been thirteen solo shows of Laufer's paintings, prints, and drawings.[12] Most of these shows were at the Phoenix Gallery in New York where Laufer exhibited over a period of twenty years, and where she was included in many group shows starting in 1951. The 2006 the exhibition Seeing Double[13] included Laufer's paintings, along with those of her daughter Susan Bee, and was held at A.I.R. Gallery in New York.[14] The Provincetown Art Association and Museum held a solo retrospective exhibition, Views and Vignettes, the Works of Miriam Laufer, in 2016.[15] Laufer spent many summers with her family in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she was a regular exhibiter.

"The vivid, colorful, painterly work she produced until her death in 1980, resonate with the spirit of contemporary women's work. The unabashed and even flamboyant nudes, self-portraits, and luscious landscapes, as well as the critically engaged collage and pop works, with their stenciled statements, seem fresh and relevant today. Her engagement with autobiographical subject matter and frank depiction of the female body are unusual for a woman painter of her generation." –Johanna Drucker, curator of Views and Vignettes, the works of Miriam Laufer.[16]

Laufer's artwork has received critical recognition in The New York Times, Art News, Art in America[17], Art Digest[18], The Forward, The Brooklyn Rail,[19] and other publications. Her paintings are in many private collections and are in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford, Connecticut and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.[20]

Later life and education

In the late 1960s, Laufer became involved with the women's movement and was an early supporter of the feminist art movement. At age 52, she returned to school at Brooklyn College and received a B. A., magna cum laude, in 1973. She died of a stroke on October 6, 1980 in New York City.[21]

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References
  1. "Exhibitions". Miriam Laufer. 2018-08-20. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
  2. "Chronology". Miriam Laufer. 2018-08-10. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
  3. "VIEWS and VIGNETTES: the work of Miriam Laufer". www.paam.org. Retrieved 2018-07-01.
  4. "Miriam Laufer A Retrospective: Asylum's Press, (New York) - Between the Covers-Rare Books, Inc. ABAA". www.abebooks.com. Retrieved 2018-07-01.
  5. Women Artists News. Midmarch Associates. 1980.
  6. "MEDIA CONTENT". iereader.com. Retrieved 2018-07-01.
  7. "Sigmund Laufer". writing.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2018-07-01.
  8. Peqneño Glazier, Loss. "Charles Bernstein: An Autobiographical Interview". Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series. 24: 39 – via scholar.google.com.
  9. "VIEWS and VIGNETTES: the work of Miriam Laufer". www.paam.org. Retrieved 2018-07-05.
  10. "Biography". Miriam Laufer. 2018-08-04. Retrieved 2018-09-30.
  11. "MEDIA CONTENT". iereader.com. Retrieved 2018-07-01.
  12. "Exhibitions". Miriam Laufer. 2018-08-20. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
  13. Bee, Susan; Drucker, Johanna (2006). Seeing Double: Paintings by Susan Bee and Miriam Laufer. A.I.R. Gallery.
  14. "For This Mother and Daughter, The Family Business Is Culture". The Forward. Retrieved 2018-07-01.
  15. "Exhibitions". Miriam Laufer. 2018-08-20. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
  16. "VIEWS and VIGNETTES: the work of Miriam Laufer". www.paam.org. Retrieved 2018-07-01.
  17. Mather, Frank Jewett; Sherman, Frederic Fairchild (2006). Art in America. Brandt Art Publications.
  18. Arts Magazine. Art Digest, Incorporated. 1979.
  19. "Susan Bee and Miriam Laufer". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2018-07-15.
  20. "Museums". Miriam Laufer. 2018-08-23. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
  21. "VIEWS and VIGNETTES: the work of Miriam Laufer". www.paam.org. Retrieved 2018-07-06.
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