Harold Altman A’47

Harold Altman A’47 was a Printmaker, Painter and Professor of Art.  He was born in New York City in 1924. He attended the Art Students League, 1941-42 and Cooper Union,1941-47, He graduated from The Cooper Union Art School in 1947.  He studied at the New School in New York City 1947-49  and L’Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris 1949-52.  He passed away in 2003.

Harold’s studies at The Cooper Union were interrupted by World War II.  He served with the 937th Engineer Camouflage, European Theater of Operations during World War II, 1942-45.

Harold taught art at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee in the early 1950s as an Assistant Professor.  He taught at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro in the mid-1950’s.  He taught at Penn State’s School of Visual Arts from 1962 to 1976.  From 1962 to 2003, he worked out of his studio in Lemont, PA.  He spent a portion of each year in Paris, where he printed his lithographs.  The prints were often scenic landscapes.  Some are of colorful market places.

At age 35, Harold Altman’s drawings were included in the first Paris Biennial that was held in October of 1959.  Dore Ashton described Harold Altman as a “distinguished draftsman …who like Serat, …Mr. Altman has moved slowly from an essentially linear approach to one stressing the effect of light on mass.”

His work has been collected by major museums.  The New York Museum of Modern Art owns more than forty of his works, and the Whitney and Brooklyn Museums each have over fifty of his works in their permanent collections.  His work is also owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum of London, the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam, the Kunst Museum of Basel, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Copenhagen and the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris.

Awards

Harold Altman was awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Tamarind Lithography Fellowship, a National Institute of the Arts and Letters Award, a Fulbright-Hayes Senior Research Fellowship for work in France and a National Endowment for the Arts Grant.  He received a Cooper Union Presidential Citation Award in 1975 and was inducted into the Cooper Union Hall of Fame in 2009.

Links to on-line galleries

Lemont Editions, Artist Harold Altman,   Link

Artnet,  Harold Altman Landscape Prints  Link

Herdon Fine Art Prints, Harold Altman Limited Edition Prints, Link

Art Brokerage, Harold Altman, Link

References:

Harold Altman Website, Harold Altman Inc. 2011.  Link