Sarasota Artist Syd Solomon (1917-2004) American, Oil On Masonite. Signed along bottom. Titled "Gulf Seamount." Depicts an abstract landscape. Framed.

Overall Size: 15 1/4 x 11 1/4 in. 

Sight Size: 12 1/2 x x8 1/2 in. 

#10 . 

Syd Solomon was born July 12th, 1917 in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and started painting in high school. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1935 to 1938, and in 1940 he enlisted in the Engineer Aviation Regiment, First Camouflage Battalion of the military. During this time Solomon helped design camouflage for the California coast near the San Francisco area, and when the US joined World War II he was assigned to the Royal Engineer Camouflage Corps in London. He went on to be considered one of the most important camoufleurs in the War, and earned five Bronze stars including one for his contributions during the Battle of the Bulge. During his time in London he mostly performed aerial reconnaissance, which inspired his ideas on abstract art. After the war he went on to attend classes at the French L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1945. Upon returning to America Solomon and his wife Annie moved to Sarasota, Florida in 1946. He began to exhibit his work at the Ringling Museum of Art, making him the first contemporary artist to be displayed in the museum. His work was quickly noticed by other artists and curators, leading to several national exhibitions throughout the early 1950s. In 1955 the couple visited East Hampton, New York, which soon after became their second home. By 1959 the Solomons had developed the ritual of spending winter and spring in Sarasota and autumn in the Hamptons, continuing this dual lifestyle for the next 30 years. The environmental settings of his two homes worked as inspiration for his paintings. By this point, the Solomon family had grown to include a daughter, Michele, and later a son, Michael. The artist began having regular showings at the Saidenberg Gallery in New York while also doing yearly shows in both the Hamptons and Miami. After the 1950s Solomon’s style became heavily influenced by nature, illustrating his fascination with the climatic and overall environmental conditions of land, sea, and sky. In the 1960s he started using polymer tempera as a base and would then combine it with various colored inks and oils, and also became one of the premier artists to use acrylic paint. He was a proponent of a specific resist technique that used a lactic casein solution to mask the painting, and many of his works usually consisted of circles, squares, and curves. Solomon was not concerned with perfection in his art strokes as much as rough edges that left for unpredictability, and the color black always played a big part in his work. In 1961 he received several awards and accolades including the 13th New England Annual and the Painting of the Year from the Whitney Museum of American Art, and his prestige helped bring many well-established artists down to Florida after he started his Institute of Fine Art at New College. These artists included James Brooks, Larry Rivers, and Conrad Marca-Relli. The Solomon home in the Hamptons had also become a cultural gathering spot for many famous artists and writers. In 1970 Solomon, with the help of architect Gene Leedy, built an award-winning home and studio on Siesta Key in Sarasota, and in 1975 the New York Cultural Center and the Ringling Museum both held retrospective exhibitions of the artist’s works. Throughout his life Solomon taught at many different institutions, including the Pittsburgh Art Institute, the Famous Artists School, and the Tampa Bay Art Center. He also received many awards in his lifetime including the Ford Foundation Special Purchase Grant for the Guggenheim Museum. Around 1990 Solomon began to display symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, and died on January 24th, 2004 in his home in Sarasota.

Good.