Harry Holtzman (June 8, 1912 – September 25, 1987) was an American artist and founding member of the American Abstract Artists group.
At the age of fourteen, Holtzman visited the Société Anonyme’s 1926 “International Exhibition of Modern Art” at the Brooklyn Museum and developed an early interest in advanced art with the guidance and encouragement of a high school teacher.
At sixteen, in 1928, he began attending the Art Students League of New York and became an active participant in League activities, serving as a monitor and contributing to the quarterly magazine. At a membership meeting in early 1932, Holtzman’s remarks against the xenophobia of the League’s director were instrumental in carrying a membership vote that brought George Grosz and Hans Hofmann to teach at the League. At the close of this meeting, Burgoyne Diller, a Hofmann protégé, taken by Holtzman’s independence of mind, introduced himself, beginning an important lasting relationship. (1)(5)(8)(9)
In this period and working directly from the nude Harry Holtzman produced a wide corpus of drawings that reveals a progressive evolution towards abstraction, expressing his clearly understanding of the Cézanne's lesson.(1)(3)
Step by step his work, using his own words, become " absolutely pure, very much in a kind of expressionist so called abstract expressionism vene" (3) Harry Holtzman was part of the first exhibition of abstract art organized at the Art Student League, with B.Diller, Albert Swinden, Albert Wilkenson. (1)
From 1933 the Abstract research of the artist evolves then into a series of rectilinear works, basically an independent abstraction from external objects, an important work of this period is 'Dynamic Equilibrium of Movement and Contromovement'(#661 Estate of Harry Holtzman).
An untitled gouache painting of the same year (# 606 Estate of Harry Holtzman) shows the carried on argument with Diller over whether circular forms could be integrated into a grid arrangement without seeming to be indiscreet and arbitrary, from this discussion Harry Holtzman decided they could not. (9)(11)
By January 1934, Holtzman recalls,
“...in my completely independent development I’d struck in a direction, which without knowing it, was taking me in a direction similar to Mondrian. One day Diller was seeing some works in my studio... He asked me if I had seen the recently opened Museum of Living Art (A.E. Gallatin’s collection at the New York University library on Washington Square. I hadn’t. I went. This was the first clue I had to Mondrian’s perception, the two paintings that Gallatin had acquired...” (3)
In the ensuing months, Holtzman
“became obsessed with not only the paintings of Mondrian, but with the idea that the man had to think certain things about historical transformation, the values and functions of art. I really had to go to Europe to speak with him.” (3)
By the end of November, Holtzman had raised enough money to pay for passage to France. In mid-December he introduced himself to Mondrian in the Dutch artist’s Paris studio. Despite a language barrier and an age difference of forty years, the two men became good friends during the four months of Holtzman’s stay in Paris.
When Holtzman returned to New York City in 1935, he joined the WPA Federal Art project, but was first assigned to write for the public relations department, since his art was considered too extreme for public placement. When Diller was promoted as managing supervisor of the Mural Division in New York, he appointed Holtzman as his assistant supervisor in charge of the abstract mural painters. In 1936 Holtzman was instrumental in bringing together the nucleus of painters and sculptors who established the American Abstract Artists in 1937. Although he opposed the group’s emphasis on exhibitions, and the attempts of certain influential members to exclude all but “pure-abstractionists”, Holtzman maintained an active role for several years, serving as secretary in 1938 and again in 1940 and arranged for the three-week AAA exhibition and its educational component at the American Art Today Building of the New York World’s Fair in 1940, directed by Holger Cahill.
During the German Blitz of London in 1940, Holtzman arranged for Mondrian to come to New York, where he arrived that October. Holtzman rented an apartment-studio for him, and during the next three and a half years he was one of Mondrian’s most intimate associates. (1)(2)
Of a painting construction (Sculpture 1941) by Harry Holtzman now in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, Piet Mondrian commented: “In the present three dimensional works of H.H. (Harry Holtzman) the picture moves still more from the wall into our surrounding space. In this way the painting more literally annihilates the three dimensional volume.” (letter to Harry Holtzman 6 1 1942 cited by Daniel Abadie in the catalogue 'Paris New York Paris', Paris Musee National d'Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou 1977) (2)(4)
The piece, included in the "Spring Salon for Young Artists" (18 May - 26 June 1943) at the Art of This Century gallery in New York, was also shown in the Maya Deren's film "Witch's Cradle" filmed at the AoTC during the August 1943.
Holtzman was associated with the Atelier 17 printmaking studio.
According to Nancy J. Troy Holtzman's sculptures are akin to works by European and American artists who sought to apply Mondrian's principle of Neoplasticism into the three dimensions. Cesar Domela, Jean Gorin, B Diller, worked out from the painted surface but still adhering to that surface for their overall concept. Harry Holtzman set out in a new direction by working in the round. (4)