Elias Friedensohn

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/29/obituaries/elias-friedensohn-67-a-painter-and-sculptor.html (June 22, 2009)Elias Friedensohn, 67, A Painter and SculptorPublished: Thursday, August 29, 1991Elias Friedensohn, a painter, watercolorist and sculptor and professor emeritus of art at Queens College, died on Monday at his home in Leonia, N.J. He was 67 years old.He died of cancer, said a spokesman for the college.Mr. Friedensohn's work was exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Smithsonian Institution. His paintings are in the permanent collections of the Whitney, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Los Angeles County Museum, among others.Symbols of human suffering were a frequent theme in his work. Writing in The New York Times about an exhibition of Mr. Friedensohn's paintings at Jersey City State College in 1982, Vivien Raynor said "his talent is for light, color and intimate scale."Mr. Friedensohn was born in New York City. He graduated from the High School of Music and Art, studied at Temple University in Philadelphia, graduated from Queens College, and did postgraduate work at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. He joined the Queens College art department in 1959 and retired in 1987.He is survived by his wife, Doris; a daughter, Shola; a son, Adam; a sister, Marsha Worby of Reno, Nev., and a granddaughter.http://eliasfriedensohn.com/about.html 12-23-2014A native New Yorker and long time resident of Leonia, NJ, Elias Friedensohn began exhibiting in 1951. Over the course of four decades, he had more than 40 one-person shows of paintings and sculpture.After graduating from the High School of Music and Art in 1942, Friedensohn attended the Tyler School of Fine Arts at Temple University. He served with the army in Europe during World War II, received the B.A. from Queens College (CUNY) in 1948 and studied at the Art Institute of NYU from 1949 to 1951. He joined the Queens College Art Department in 1959 and retired as Professor Emeritus of Art in 1987. In addition to one-person exhibits in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Berkeley, Friedensohn’s work has appeared in major national shows at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, The Whitney Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian Institution and many others. His paintings and sculpture are represented in many permanent collections, including the Whitney Museum, the Sara Roby Foundation, the Minneapolis Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum. Articles on the work have appeared in Art News, Art Forum, Art in America, The New York Times, The New Yorker and other publications. He has been the recipient of several prestigious awards including a Guggenheim grant, a Fulbright to Italy, and American Academy of Arts and Letters award, and grants from the New Jersey Council on the Arts. Right before his death he completed the manuscript for a book entitled “The Secrets of Elias Friedensohn.” To obtain an abbreviated version of that unpublished volume, contact doris.friedensohn@verizon.net