Sam Glankoff (October 30, 1894April 13, 1982) was an American

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 ...

and

woodcut Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that ...

artist.

Biography

Glankoff was born on October 30, 1894, in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. His mother, Yetta Emerman, had emigrated from Latvia to the United States in 1880 and became a hat designer in New York City. She married Jacob Glanckopf, a purveyor of exotic feathers. Glankoff began his art education by studying and copying miniature paintings on exhibit at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

. When he was 20 years old, he began attending night classes at the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may study f ...

, but in 1917, he left the United States for

Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...

as a

conscientious objector A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of conscience or religion. The term has also been extended to objecting to working for the military–indu ...

when the United States entered the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. In Cuba, Glankoff traveled around on horseback, painting

portraits A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better re ...

until, in 1918, he was caught in an ambush, falsely arrested for having participated in the bombing of a railway station in Miami. After spending several months in prison in Cuba, Glankoff was released as the war came to an end and he returned to New York. In 1922, Hans O. Hofman and Karoly Fulop introduced Glankoff to Juliana R. Force, the director of the Whitney Studio Club. She invited Glankoff to exhibit paintings and woodcuts, which he did, until the Club disbanded in 1928. At one of the Whitney Studio Club's annual exhibitions, Glankoff showed an example of what would become his preferred medium and the basis for his artistic innovations, a simple

. Inspired by the woodcut techniques of the German Expressionists

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (Karl Schmidt until 1905; 1 December 1884 – 10 August 1976) was a German expressionist painter and printmaker; he was one of the four founders of the artist group Die Brücke. Life and work Schmidt-Rottluff was born in R ...

and

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (6 May 1880 – 15 June 1938) was a German Expressionism, expressionist Painting, painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expr ...

, Glankoff’s new rough and expressive style emerged from his experiments. In the 1920s and 1930s, he became an artist for numerous commercial art studios in New York, for which he employed woodcut-making techniques. In the late 1920s, Glankoff formed a relationship with Frances Kornblum, with whom he would live for the next 44 years, splitting their time between their

apartment and a house in

Woodstock The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held from August 15 to 18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, Woodstock. Billed as "a ...

where he continued to paint. Over the next two decades, Glankoff created woodcut and pen and ink illustrations for ''

St. Nicholas Magazine ''St. Nicholas'' was a popular monthly American children's magazine, founded by Scribner's in 1873 and named after the Christian saint. The first editor was Mary Mapes Dodge, who continued her association with the magazine until her death in 1 ...

'', ''

Scribners Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City that has published several notable American authors, including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjor ...

'', ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'', '' Family Circle Magazine'' and for his brother Mort Glankoff's new '' CUE Magazine''. He created woodcut book illustrations for the major publishing houses; Harcourt, Brace and Co,

Alfred A. Knopf Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Blanche Knopf and Alfred A. Knopf Sr. in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers ...

, and

Horace Liveright Horace Brisbin Liveright (pronounced "LIVE-right," anglicized by Horace's father from the German ''Liebrecht;'' 10 December 1884 – 24 September 1933) was an American publisher and stage producer. With Albert Boni, he founded the Modern Libr ...

. In the mid-1940s, he served as the head artist for '' True Comics'', a comic-book series for boys, whose offerings included historical legends, adventure stories, adaptations of literary classics and science-fiction tales. Glankoff also produced comic strip illustrations for the advertising campaigns of brands such as Westinghouse and

Chiquita Chiquita Brands International S.à.r.l. (), formerly known as United Fruit Co., is a Swiss company producing and distributing bananas and other produce. The company operates under subsidiary brand names, including the flagship Chiquita bran ...

. In his personal work, in addition to painting, he continued to further refine his woodcut-making techniques. and soon became captivated by the properties of

casein Casein ( , from Latin ''caseus'' "cheese") is a family of related phosphoproteins (CSN1S1, αS1, aS2, CSN2, β, K-casein, κ) that are commonly found in mammalian milk, comprising about 80% of the proteins in cow's milk and between 20% and 60% of ...

. paints and water-based inks. In the mid-1950s, Glankoff began to assist Kornblum full time at her company, Impulse Items. No longer importing stuffed toys from France, Glankoff was tasked to design the stuffed animals for Impulse Items. It was Glankoff who designed and hand-fabricated the first, three dimensional versions of the

Babar the Elephant Babar the Elephant ( , , ) is an elephant character named Babar who first appeared in 1931 in the French children's book ''Histoire de Babar'' by Jean de Brunhoff. The book is based on a tale that Brunhoff's wife, Cécile, had invented for ...

Family and

Dr. Seuss Theodor Seuss Geisel ( ;"Seuss"
'' The Cat in the Hat ''The Cat in the Hat'' is a 1957 children's book written and illustrated by American author Dr. Seuss. The story centers on a tall anthropomorphic cat who wears a red and white-striped top hat and a red bow tie. The Cat shows up at the house ...

'' in an arrangement Kornblum had secured with

Random House Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...

who was publishing ''

The Cat in the Hat ''The Cat in the Hat'' is a 1957 children's book written and illustrated by American author Dr. Seuss. The story centers on a tall anthropomorphic cat who wears a red and white-striped top hat and a red bow tie. The Cat shows up at the house ...

'' with

Dr. Seuss Theodor Seuss Geisel ( ;"Seuss"
'' Frances Kornblum passed away, Glankoff left the toy business to set up a painting studio in their small apartment on East 33rd St. Painting each morning and creating preparatory drawings for future works in the afternoons, he slowly developed his unique process of using a printmaking process to make a painting. When he wasn't painting, Glankoff spent most of his time in solitude, drawing, and reading

Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th-century French ph ...

and Kierkegaard, science fiction and Buddhist literature. In the mid-1970s, curators from the Prints and Drawings department at the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

in New York visited Glankoff at his studio. By that time, he had come to describe the technique he had developed as that of “using a printing method to make a painting.” His visitors from the museum coined the term “print-paintings”, to describe the hybrid technique Glankoff used to create unique works. The Whitney's curators offered to present Glankoff's work in a solo exhibition at the museum, to which he responded: “I’m not ready yet.” It was not until October 1981, at the age of 87, that Glankoff had his first solo exhibition in a commercial gallery. That presentation, at New York's Graham Gallery, took place only a few months before his death. John Russell, art critic of

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

, wrote: "It is not every day that an artist of stature makes his debut in New York at the age of 87". Shortly thereafter, the

Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum (known popularly as the Zimmerli Art Museum) is located on the Voorhees Mall of the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The museum houses more than 60,000 works, including Russian and ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

, organized “Sam Glankoff 1894–1982: A Retrospective Exhibition.” Shown in 1984, it was the first comprehensive survey of Glankoff's art.

Print-Painting

In the 1970s, Glankoff invented a new artistic style and work process, called " Print-Painting". He defined his technique as “using a printing method to make a painting.” A form of both transfer painting and printmaking, Glankoff built up his forms through several layers of pigment, resulting in unique images of great visual impact. He replaced the woodcut medium’s traditional block of wood with multiple plywood boards scaled to the handmade Japanese paper that he used. By printing several layers of color with water-soluble inks and casein, he was able to achieve a unique luminosity of surface. Using this indirect method, Glankoff managed to retain the spontaneity and dynamism of his expressionist brushstroke. Glankoff's ‘Print-Paintings’ are composed of individually printed, uniform-sized panels of hand-made Japanese papers, joined (pasted) together to make one unique large-scale work. In creating a print-painting, Sam Glankoff would reference a scaled-up preliminary or preparatory drawing, and transfer his design onto multiple, gesso-primed, ¼” plywood boards. Initially, he used the rough and expressive style that emerged from his experiments in

to carve his design in the plywood panels and then build-up sculptural surface details on the wood with gesso. Eventually, Glankoff would paint the design directly onto the surface of the boards in enamel paint and no longer carve the design into the wood. Glankoff designed his own printing table which could secure each individual board, and yet was able to carry each panel of Japanese paper across, so that multiple and successive layers of color could be applied to the paper panels, with the boards remaining in register. With his work experience and years of experimentation with densities of Japanese papers, water-soluble inks,

and glycerin, which by adding, he discovered would retard the drying

pigment A pigment is a powder used to add or alter color or change visual appearance. Pigments are completely or nearly solubility, insoluble and reactivity (chemistry), chemically unreactive in water or another medium; in contrast, dyes are colored sub ...

process, Glankoff was able to control the absorption capacity of the

Japanese paper is traditional Japanese paper processed by hand using fibers from the inner bark of the gampi tree, the mitsumata shrub (''Edgeworthia chrysantha''), or the paper mulberry (''kōzo'') bush. ''Washi'' is generally tougher than ordinary p ...

, and transfer layer upon layer of his hand-mixed colors onto the multiple paper panels that would make up each print-painting. Although he may have re-used his boards to create more than one work using the same “design”, each one of his 1 – 9 panel " print-painting's" was approached as a unique work. The term "print-painting" was coined by Elke Solomon, former Assistant Curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the

described the results "''as if

Milton Avery Milton Clark Avery (; March 7, 1885 – January 3, 1965Haskell, B. (2003). "Avery, Milton". Grove Art Online.) was an American Modern art, modern painter. Born in Altmar, New York, he moved to Connecticut in 1898 and later to New York City. He wa ...

had been to school with a first-rate

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

printer''".

Styles

Glankoff made landscape and still-life paintings, German Expressionist woodcuts,

watercolors Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin 'water'), is a painting method"Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to the S ...

, abstract collage monotypes, and late in life, developed a technique that came to be called “print-painting.” His early commercial work consisted of illustrations for

comics a Media (communication), medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of Panel (comics), panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, Glo ...

, magazines, and woodcut illustrations for adaptations of classics. Simultaneously with his woodcuts, he made pictorial work, such as: * Still life with white bowl (1920) * The portrait of his father (1922) * Woodstock Landscape: The green trees and hills (1930) * Plate of Red Apples (1930)

Museography

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Street (Manhattan), 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent coll ...

Detroit Institute of Arts The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) is a museum institution located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan. It has list of largest art museums, one of the largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it cove ...

* The Jewish Museum *

Worcester Art Museum The Worcester Art Museum houses over 38,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day and representing cultures from all over the world. The museum opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Its holdings include Roman mosaics, Europe ...

Fogg Art Museum The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

Skirball Cultural Center The Skirball Cultural Center, founded in 1996, is a Jewish educational institution in Los Angeles, California. The center, named after philanthropist couple Jack H. Skirball and Audrey Skirball-Kenis, has a museum with regularly changing exhi ...

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress 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 ...

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art The Block Museum of Art is a free public art museum located on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The Block Museum was established in 1980 when Chicago art collectors Mary (daughter of Albert Lasker) and Leigh B. Block ...

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the Methodi ...

Davison Art Center Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the Methodi ...

Smith College Museum of Art The Smith College Museum of Art, abbreviated SCMA, is the art museum of Smith College, located in Northampton, Massachusetts, Northampton, Massachusetts. First established in 1870, the museum is part of the American Alliance of Museums, Five Coll ...

Private collections

* Becton, Dickinson and Company *

Champion International Paper Champion International was a large paper and wood products producer based since 1980 in Stamford, Connecticut. It was acquired by International Paper in 2000. From 1893 it had been based in Hamilton, Ohio, expanding to plants in Texas and Western N ...

Chemical Bank Chemical Bank, headquartered in New York City, was the principal operating subsidiary of Chemical Banking Corporation, a bank holding company. In 1996, it acquired Chase Bank, adopted the Chase name, and became the largest bank in the United Stat ...

Davis Polk & Wardwell Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, commonly known as Davis Polk, is an American multinational corporation, multinational law firm headquartered in New York City with offices in Washington, D.C., Menlo Park, California, Menlo Park, London, Madrid, Brussel ...

* The Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection * Philip Morris * Seligman and Latz * Simpson, Thatcher and Bartlett *

Stephens Inc. Stephens Inc. is a privately held, independent financial services firm headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas. As one of the largest privately owned investment banks in the United States, Stephens has 28 offices worldwide and employs more than 1,2 ...

Smurfit-Stone Container Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation was a global pulp and paper industry, paperboard and paper-based packaging company based in Creve Coeur, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois, with approximately 21,000 employees. In 2007, Smurfit-Stone was ranke ...

Documentary

The film, ''Re-Arranging Short Dreams'', is a

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

made by filmmaker and cameraman Seth Schneidman and Wendy Snyder a year before Glankoff's first solo exhibition. It is a 17-minute pilot film that talks about the life and work of the artist within his studio.

References

External links

Sam Glankoff – Official Website

Sam Glankoff – ArtNet

* ttps://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/15/obituaries/sam-glankoff-artist-had-fall-debut-at-87.html?searchResultPosition=1 Sam Glankoff – NY Times Obituary, April 15, 1982
Sam Glankoff – NY Times. ABOUT NEW YORK, July 14, 1982
{{DEFAULTSORT:Glankoff, Sam 1894 births 1982 deaths American abstract painters Abstract expressionist artists Artists from New York (state) 20th-century American painters American male painters American people of Latvian descent Painters from New York (state) 20th-century American male artists