Michael Mazur (American, 1935-)
Hand signed and titled
The Lake II, 1985
Color monotype
Hand signed, titled, and dated in pencil lower margin
Dimensions overall: 47 x 82 in. (frame) h. 38 w. 72 in.
Provenance:
John C. Stoller Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota (gallery label on verso)
Michael Burton Mazur (1935-August 18, 2009) was an American artist who was described by William Grimes of The New York Times as "a restlessly inventive printmaker, painter, and sculptor."
Born and raised in New York City, Mazur attended the Horace Mann School. He received a bachelor's degree from Amherst College in 1958, then studied art at Yale.
Mazur first gained notice for his series of lithographs and etchings of inmates in a mental asylum, which resulted in two publications, "Closed Ward" and "Locked Ward." Over the years, he worked in printmaking and painting. His series of large-scale prints for Dante's Inferno won critical acclaim, and were the subject of a traveling exhibition organized by the University of Iowa in 1994. Later he concentrated on creating large, lyrical paintings which make use of his free, gestural brushwork and a varied palette. Some of these paintings were seen in an exhibition of 2002 at Boston University, "Looking East: Brice Marden, Michael Mazur, and Pat Steir." (See also Susan Danly, "Branching: The Art of Michael Mazur," 1997).
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has acquired a definMichael Mazur received a B.A. from Amherst College in 1957, studying in his senior year at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy. He went on to earn both a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Art and Architecture in 1961. Mazur's first teaching job was at the Rhode Island School of Design from 1961 to 1964. He was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship for 1964–65. From 1965 to 1976, he taught at Brandeis University, and from 1976 to 1978 at Harvard University. As an artist, teacher, and writer, Mazur has been active in reviving the monotype process. He contributed an essay to the pioneering exhibition catalogue The Painterly Print, published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1980. Mazur recently chaired the New Provincetown Print Project , which encourages artists to create monotypes at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He has had several exhibitions of his work and has served on the Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities. He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Joann Moser Singular Impressions: The Monotype in America (Washington, D.C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1997)
A humanist concerned with social and environmental issues, Mazur has experimented with non representational imagery, but has consistently remained apart from avant-garde movements. He studied at Amherst and with Leonard Baskin in Northampton, Massachusetts, and did graduate work with Gabor Peterdi and Bernard Chaet at Yale. Following three years as a teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design he joined the faculty at Brandeis University in 1965. From 1961 to 1966 he worked on a series of prints based on visits to a mental facility in Providence—many of which comment on humanity robbed of history, age, clothes, and social standing. The influence of Rembrandt, Goya, Daumier, Edvard Munch, and Kathe Kollwitz can be discerned in Mazur's early work, although during the late 1960s thematic concerns gave way to experimentation with graphic media. Highly expressionistic in handling and color, and ambiguous in thematic relationships, Mazur's recent paintings explore disturbing narrative images of implied violence and its emotional residue.
Virginia M. Mecklenburg Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1987) Trudy V. Hansen authored a catalogue raisonne of Mazur's prints in 2000. In 1987 he was included in the group exhibition: The Monumental Image: Prints by Jennifer Bartlett, Chuck Close, Michael Mazur, Susan Rothenberg, Donald Sultan, Terry Winters, California State University, Northridge; Modern American Realism, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.Mazur's work is owned by museums including the Chicago Art Institute, the British Museum, The Fogg Museum, the Philadelphia Museum, Whitney Museum, Yale Art Gallery, The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.
He was included in the show The Expressive Voice: Selections from the Permanent Collection at the Danforth Museum of Art. An exhibition of Boston Expressionism, a school that embraced a distinctive blend of visionary painting, dark humor, religious mysticism, and social commentary. Historical roots of this movement can be traced to European Symbolism and German Expressionism, but artists living and working in the Boston area from the 1930’s through the 1950’s, were particularly inspired by Chaim Soutine and Max Beckmann. Artists included; Aaron Fink, Bernard Chaet, David Aronson, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Hyman Bloom, Jack Levine, Jackson Pollock, Jason Berger, Karl Zerbe, Lawrence Kupferman, Michael Mazur, Sigmund Abeles and Willem de Kooning.
He was included in the show 40 Years of Printmaking: From the Center Street Studio Archives, along other great figural artists Gabor Peterdi, John Walker, Lester Johnson and Nell Blaine. He was long active as a teacher and supporter at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Massachusetts.
