Irma Cavat
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Irma Cavat (1925 – February 16, 2020) was an American visual artist. She was associated with the
Abstract Expressionists Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...
but painted and worked primarily in a surreal and
modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
style. From 1965 to 2000, Cavat was an Assistant Professor of Art at the
University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...
, where she lived until her death.


Early life and education

Irma Cavat was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1925. She became a professional artist in her early 20s. She was the older sister of medical anthropologist Carol Laderman. She took courses in drawing, sculpture, art history and painting at
Académie de la Grande Chaumière The Académie de la Grande Chaumière () is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France. History The school was founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, near the A ...
,
New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
,
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 ...
, the
Brooklyn Museum Art School The Brooklyn Museum Art School was a non-degree-granting professional school that opened at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York in the summer of 1941. The Brooklyn Museum Art School provided instruction for amateur artists as well until Ja ...
and the Academy of Allied Arts. She also studied independently with sculptors Jose De Creeft and
Alexander Archipenko Alexander Porfyrovych Archipenko (February 25, 1964) was a Ukrainian-American avant-garde artist, sculpture, sculptor, and graphic designer, graphic artist, active in France and the United States. He was one of the first to apply the principles o ...
, and painter
Hans Hofmann Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. His career spanned two generations and two continents, and is considered to have both preceded and influenced Abstrac ...
. She lived in Rome, Italy, from 1955 to 1964, where she received a grant from the
Fulbright Program The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...
, married painter Zubel Kachadoorian and gave birth to daughters Nika and Karina.


Career and work

As a young artist, Cavat modeled for surrealist artist Rene Magritte and became part of the
Abstract Expressionist Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...
group, befriending Elaine and
Willem De Kooning Willem de Kooning ( , ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. Born in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, he moved to the United States in 1926, becoming a US citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married pa ...
, Jackson Pollack, and
Larry Rivers Larry Rivers (born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg; August 17, 1923 – August 14, 2002) was an American painter, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor. Considered by many scholars to be the "Godfather" and "Grandfather" of Pop art, he was on ...
. Over her career, she worked across media, including paint, clay, metal, marble, jewelry and collage. She was also commissioned to paint murals in Haiti, Greece, and the United States. In 1995, in collaboration with landscape architect Isabelle Greene and Nobel laureate
Walter Kohn Walter Kohn (; March 9, 1923 – April 19, 2016) was an Austrian-American theoretical physicist and theoretical chemist. He was awarded, with John Pople, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998. The award recognized their contributions to the un ...
, Cavat helped create the
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) is a non-profit, non-partisan international education and advocacy organization. Founded in 1982, NAPF is composed of individuals and organizations from all over the world. It has consultative status to the ...
's Sadako Peace Garden on the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima tragedy. Noted kinetic sculptor
George Rickey George Warren Rickey (June 6, 1907 – July 17, 2002) was an American kinetic sculptor known for geometric abstractions, often large-scale, engineered to move in response to air currents. Early life and education Rickey was born on June 6, ...
spent many winters with his family in a studio on Cavat's property in Santa Barbara. Sculptor
Tal Avitzur Tal Avitzur is a found-object sculptor known for creating assemblage robots, creatures, spaceships and other fantasy-themed sculptures. Early life and education Avitzur was born in 1962 in Haifa, Israel. He was raised in Allentown, PA. His f ...
credits Cavat with inspiring him to start down his own artistic path. Cavat was awarded residencies at
Yaddo Yaddo is an artists' community located on a estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.". On March  ...
in New York, the McDowell Colony in Maine and the Djerassi Foundation in Northern California. She was exhibited widely in the United States and Italy, and her works are in the permanent collection at the Art, Design and Architecture Museum of the University of California, Santa Barbara and in various private collections. She was exhibited at New York City's
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
in 1956 and was reviewed in ''
Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...
'', American Riviera Media, ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'', ''
New York Herald Tribune The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the '' New York Tribune'' acquired the '' New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and compet ...
'' and elsewhere. A review of her 1966 exhibition at the
Phoenix Art Museum The Phoenix Art Museum is the largest art museum, museum for visual art in the southwest United States. Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the museum is . It displays international exhibitions alongside its comprehensive collection of more than 18,0 ...
offered praise for her use of color and noted her works incorporating cloth and newsprint. A retrospective of her work was held at Legacy Art Santa Barbara in July 2024. Cavat died on February 16, 2020, in Santa Barbara.


References


Further reading

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External links


Irma Cavat
at Artnet * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cavat, Irma 1925 births 2020 deaths 20th-century American painters Painters from California University of California, Santa Barbara faculty 20th-century American women painters Painters from Brooklyn