33 Facts About Chaim Koppelman

Chaim Koppelman was an American artist, art educator, and Aesthetic Realism consultant.

Chaim Koppelman established the Printmaking Department of the School of Visual Arts in 1959, and taught there until 2007.

Chaim Koppelman's art is noted for its originality, masterful technique, humor, and power.

Chaim Koppelman is represented in most major print collections, including New York's Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum, Metropolitan Museum, New York Public Library, Brooklyn Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, National Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Chaim Koppelman was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to Sam and Sadie Koppelman, whose images appear in several of his works.

Chaim Koppelman began his study of art in Works Progress Administration classes at the Brooklyn Museum in 1936, and continued at Brooklyn College, the Educational Alliance, and the American Artists School.

Chaim Koppelman studied sculpture with William Koss, abstract painting with Carl Holty, and lithography with Eugene Morley.

The first recorded exhibition of Chaim Koppelman's work was held in the Lounge Gallery of the Eighth Street Playhouse in 1942, and included drawings, paintings, and sculpture.

In 1940 Chaim Koppelman began attending poetry classes with Eli Siegel, the American poet and critic who first came to national attention in 1925, when his poem, "Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana" won the esteemed poetry prize of The Nation.

Chaim Koppelman felt his work suffered from a fight between rigidity and flexibility.

Chaim Koppelman learned he could go after precision in the studio as penance for being careless at other times, wanting to get away from things.

Boldness of imagination and an unerring sense of detail were two qualities Chaim Koppelman's work became noted for.

Chaim Koppelman learned that art does not arise from suffering or depression, but rather from the hope to respect and honestly like the world by seeing opposites as one.

Chaim Koppelman's art is permeated with his understanding of this conflict.

Chaim Koppelman's works are often allegories which point to the discrepancy between, and the need to integrate, opposites such as pride and humility, generosity and selfishness, idealism and cynicism.

In November 1942, Chaim Koppelman was drafted into the United States Army and in 1943 he married painter Dorothy Myers.

Chaim Koppelman worked as a radio weatherman during World War II, guiding ships through the rough waters of the English Channel, which was a critical part of the Invasion of Normandy.

Chaim Koppelman manned an anti-aircraft machine gun in the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach, and later, as staff sergeant, was awarded a Bronze Star.

Blackburn credited Chaim Koppelman with saving the workshop when it faced financial difficulties in 1956, by transforming it into a seven-member artists cooperative with annual dues to keep its doors open.

In 1955, the Terrain Gallery opened with Dorothy Chaim Koppelman as founding director.

Chaim Koppelman opened his own studio and graphic workshop in 1964 at 498 Broome Street, pioneering the SoHo artists' community.

Chaim Koppelman was commissioned in 1968 to interview Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Anuszkiewicz, and Clayton Pond on the relevance of the Siegel Theory of Opposites to their work.

Chaim Koppelman's prints were compared to William Blake and Francisco Goya.

Chaim Koppelman received the SAGA Markel Prize in 1956, and Tiffany Grants in 1967 and 1969.

Chaim Koppelman represented the United States in the Documenta II exhibition, Kassel, West Germany in 1969.

In 1959, Chaim Koppelman began the Printmaking Department at the School of Visual Arts, where he taught until 2007.

Chaim Koppelman taught at the National Academy, New York University, SUNY New Paltz, the Rhodes Preparatory School, and the 92nd Street Y In 1971, he became a consultant on the faculty of the not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism Foundation.

Chaim Koppelman taught The Art of Drawing: Surface and Depth.

Chaim Koppelman studied Aesthetic Realism with Eli Siegel until 1978, and then in professional classes with the Chairman of Education, Ellen Reiss.

Chaim Koppelman is the author of The Art of the Print, essays on works of Picasso, Daumier, Munch, Hogarth, and Duane Hanson.

Chaim Koppelman's work appears in major print collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan, Whitney, Brooklyn and Guggenheim Museums; Peabody Essex Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, the National Gallery, Pennell Collection-Library of Congress, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Los Angeles County Museum, the Walker Art Center, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Fine Arts Museum in Anchorage, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Caracas.

Chaim Koppelman died on December 6,2009, of natural causes at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, New York City.

The exhibition included selections from a lecture Siegel gave in 1951, Napoleon Bonaparte: or, Orderly Energy, which Chaim Koppelman had attended and which he credited with inspiring much of the work displayed.