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The Art Students League is proud to be the custodian of the Harvey Dinnerstein Special Collection, which includes nearly 1,000 works on paper, paintings, and other items from the estate of Harvey Dinnerstein, a legendary painter in the realist tradition and longtime League instructor.
Harvey Dinnerstein, 79th Winter, 2007, oil on canvas, 80 x 45 in. Photo by Ed Watkins.
Harvey Dinnerstein, Bamboo Flute (Ralph McAden), 1988, oil on canvas, 76 x 37.75 in.
Photo by Ed Watkins.
In June 2024, the Art Students League will present Harvey Dinnerstein: Reflections on Life and Work, an exhibition featuring nearly two dozen never-before-seen works from the Harvey Dinnerstein Special Collection. The exhibition includes paintings that are meditations on New York, Jewish identity, and the legacy of the Civil Rights Era, complemented by archival materials, including original photographs, letters, diaries, and other ephemera related to Dinnerstein's nearly eight decade career.
Harvey Dinnerstein: Reflections on Life and Work
June 6—July 13, 2024
The Art Students League of New York
Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery
Harvey Dinnerstein graduated from the High School of Music and Art and attended the Art Students League before enrolling in 1947 at Temple University's Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. Returning to New York in the early 1950s, he was one of a group of recent Tyler graduates who rebelled against the prevalent modernist and Abstract Expressionist styles by painting realistic pictures of still lifes and interiors that seemed deliberately unfashionable.
Throughout his long career, Dinnerstein's pastels, paintings, and drawings have documented what he calls "the powerful visual language of this cultural legacy" in images that "combine aspects of naturalism, or incidental observation, with classical elements of form and structure."
Dinnerstein was on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1965 to 1980, while also teaching at the National Academy of Design from 1975 to 1992. In 1980 he moved to the Art Students League.
Harvey Dinnerstein, Sam and Bill, 1997, pastel on board, 51 x 41 in.
Photo by Ed Watkins.
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