Thomas Nozkowski

(American, 1944–2019)

Thomas Nozkowski is an American painter known for his small-scale abstractions that often resemble biomorphic forms. Referencing colors and objects found in daily life, Nozkowski creates highly idiosyncratic works with affinities to artists as varied as Arthur Dove, Elizabeth Murray, and Raoul De Keyser. On the topic of subject matter he has said, “We tend to get obsessed with language and the information that can be carried by language. But I think long before men spoke, certainly before they wrote things down, they had a visual language and understanding of the world. A certain color meant a certain kind of weather was coming, a broken branch meant lunch just walked by.” Born in 1944 in Teaneck, NJ, Nozkowski spent his youth in the suburbs, admiring the bohemian culture of New York from afar before moving there in 1961. While earning his BFA at Cooper Union, Nozkowski shifted from making sculpture to painting during the heyday of Conceptual Art in the late 1960s. By 1979, he had found an audience for his work in New York. Through a number of solo exhibitions at 55 Mercer Gallery and Rosa Esman Gallery in the 1980s, along with The Museum of Modern Art acquiring his work in 1982, his reputation for creating evocative drawings, prints, and paintings was solidified. Nozkowski's long and prolific career is dotted with achievements such as a 1993 Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, and a 1999 award for painting from The American Academy of Arts and Letters. His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others. Nozkowski currently lives and works between New York, NY and High Falls, NY.