Allan Frumkin (1927–2002) was an American art dealer with galleries in Chicago and New York City in the second half of the 20th century.

Life and career

Frumkin was born in Chicago in 1927. He attended public schools and graduated from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

. He studied the sociology of architecture briefly at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

and

The New School for Social Research The New School for Social Research (NSSR), previously known as The University in Exile and The New School University, is a graduate-level educational division of The New School in New York City, United States. NSSR enrolls more than 1,000 stud ...

in New York City. Frumkin opened the Allan Frumkin Gallery in Chicago in 1952 and a gallery with the same name in New York City in 1959. In 1979 he joined forces with William Struve and the Chicago gallery was renamed Frumkin-Struve, before closing in 1980. The New York gallery was renamed Frumkin/Adams in 1988. Frumkin retired and closed the New York gallery in 1995 but continued to work as a private art dealer for most of the rest of his life. "In the early 1950s, his Chicago gallery was instrumental in introducing the European Surrealists." He promoted the work of

Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual arts, visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, ...

Max Beckmann Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, drawing, draftsman, printmaker, sculpture, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the m ...

Robert Arneson Robert Carston Arneson (September 4, 1930 – November 2, 1992) was an American sculptor and professor of ceramics in the Art department at University of California, Davis for nearly three decades. Early life and education Robert Carston Arnes ...

and

Richard Diebenkorn Richard Diebenkorn (April 22, 1922 – March 30, 1993) was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he began ...

, among others. Beginning in 1976 and lasting for 31 issues, Frumkin published a newsletter with profiles of gallery artists in their studios. He was also an art collector—382 of his Beckmann prints were donated to the

Saint Louis Art Museum The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is an art museum located in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. With paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from around the world, its three-story building stands in Forest Park in ...

in December 2002.

Personal life

Frumkin was married to Jean Martin Frumkin, who died in 2019.

Legacy

The Allan Frumkin Gallery records are housed at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. A professorship "to provide high-level interdisciplinary scholarship on the connections between visual arts and society" was established at the University of Chicago in 2005, through a $3 million gift from Frumkin's family. The faculty chair is named the Allan and Jean Frumkin Professorship in the Visual Arts in the Committee on Social Thought.

References

External links

Allan Frumkin Gallery records, 1944-2016
at Smithsonian Archives of American Art {{DEFAULTSORT:Frumkin, Allan American art collectors American art dealers University of Chicago alumni Businesspeople from Chicago 2002 deaths 1927 births 20th-century American businesspeople