Arthur Polonsky
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arthur Polonsky acclaimed nationally as a master draughtsman and painter, imbues what appears as reality with a unique, mysterious inner force. His work has a haunting, mystical quality, as if a virtuoso artistic visionary is seeing into our soul, or beyond our life to our dream world. Polonsky is one of Boston’s great painters in the last fifty years; his work is in many prestigious museums and collections, locally and nationally.
Arthur Polonsky, born in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1925, is the son of East European immigrants. A graduate of the Boston Museum School, where he was a student of Karl Zerbe, Polonsky joined numerous other American artists in their pilgrimage to France, in 1948, following graduation, where he was absorbed in the artistic ideas of Picasso, Matisse, and Redon, as well as many earlier European Masters. Upon returning to the States, Polonsky launched a career that has established him as a prominent figure and much admired artist in the Boston community.
Polonsky is known among the art cognoscenti of Boston as a virtuoso draughtsman. The noted Boston artist, Barbara Swan, has commented on Arthur Polonsky’s extraordinary ability in an essay accompanying Polonsky’s retrospective at the Fitchburg Art Museum. “Arthur Polonsky’s remarkable gift as a draughtsman.
His drawings have the excitement of a direct response to a subject, a daring use of line or tone, a sense of charged intensity. His portrait drawings not only have likeness but express a mood that is part artist, part model. To achieve a likeness is a gift in itself. When the gift for likeness is matched by a commanding talent for drawing the result is a masterful work.”
Polonsky’s imagery is a constant tension between the figurative and abstract, between realism and fantasy, between light and darkness, in a symbolic as well as an artistic sense. Both his landscapes and his figurative works have a mystical, emotional resonance, often going beyond the reality of the scene or figure to express a spiritual, other-worldly, sometimes haunted state. Among figurative painters, Polonsky is an authentic visionary. His paintings are expressive of an inner reality, and trance-like, allow us to see beyond the real world of our ordinary experience.
Polonsky’s works are in many public collections, including The White House in Washington, D.C., The Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, The Boston Public Library, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, The New York Public Library, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, The Fogg Museum of Harvard University, The Library of Congress, The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, the Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University, and The Brockton Art Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts. He is also represented in many distinguished private collections.
Arthur Polonsky was Associate Professor at Boston University, College of Fine Arts, from 1965-1990, and is now Professor Emeritus there. From 1954 to 1965, he was Assistant Professor at Brandeis University in the Fine Arts Department.
From 1950 to 1960, he taught at the Boston Museum School in the Painting Department. He was a teaching assistant to Ben Shahn, at the Boston Museum School Summer Session in Tanglewood in 1947.
Mr. Polonsky, who lives in Newton, has had a close connection with the Newton Symphony Orchestra, having created three original works for the NSO’s unique program, Art for Music. His work was featured on the NSO season brochures of 1981, 1983, and 1994.
