RAiR | 1970-71

Milton Resnick †

Milton Resnick (1917-2004) was born in Bratslav, Ukraine (Russia) and moved with his family to Brooklyn, New York when he was five. Defying his father, Milton left home at seventeen to become an artist, working at the American Artist School in exchange for tuition. He stayed in New York for most of his life except for five years in the Army during World War II and after the war, two years in Paris. Milton was an abstract expressionist founder alongside William de Kooning, a lifelong friend, and Franz Kline. His time in the Army affected his career as a painter and he struggled to gain recognition and solo shows until the late ‘50s. He married Pat Passlof, a pupil of de Kooning, and they participated in a joint art residency in Roswell. The work Milton produced during his RAiR residency earned him critical acclaim in the early ‘70s and his reputation surged. His work is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.