Sidney Jonas Budnick On Sale

Sidney Jonas Budnick was born and raised in New York and earned his bachelor of arts degree at the IIT Institute of Design. While there, he studied under László Moholy-Nagy, the founding director of the New Bauhaus and head of the School of Design (renamed the Institute of Design in 1944). In 1952, he completed his master of architecture degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, studying under Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus school in Germany.

While living in New York, Budnick met the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. He was greatly influenced by Mondrian's work and the De Stijl art movement. Budnick studied under Hans Hofmann, an Abstract Expressionist artist and teacher, and was friends with Harry Holtzman and Carl Holty, founders of the American Abstract Artists group. He also was encouraged by Hilla von Rebay, the artistic advisor for Solomon R. Guggenheim. In 1939, Guggenheim and Rebay opened the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, later named the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Rebay supported many artists, including Sidney Budnick, by hiring them as support staff at the museum. Some of Budnick's early work is classified with other works of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. His work was included in an exhibition organized by Katharine Kuh at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1948, entitled "American Abstract and Surrealist Art." His work is included in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the J. Donald Nichols collection. Although Sidney Budnick earned his living as an architect in California, supporting his wife and three children, he painted throughout his life until he died in 1994 in Oregon.

The first decades of the 20th century were a period of artistic upheaval, with modern art movements including Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism and Dadaism questioning centuries of traditional views of what art should be. Using abstraction, experimental forms and interdisciplinary techniques, painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers and performance artists all pushed the boundaries of creative expression.

Major exhibitions, like the 1913 Armory Show in New York City — also known as the “International Exhibition of Modern Art,” in which works like the radically angular Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp caused a sensation — challenged the perspective of viewers and critics and heralded the arrival of modern art in the United States. But the movement’s revolutionary spirit took shape in the 19th century.

The Industrial Revolution, which ushered in new technology and cultural conditions across the world, transformed art from something mostly commissioned by the wealthy or the church to work that responded to personal experiences. The Impressionist style emerged in 1860s France with artists like Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Edgar Degas quickly painting works that captured moments of light and urban life. Around the same time in England, the Pre-Raphaelites, like Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, borrowed from late medieval and early Renaissance art to imbue their art with symbolism and modern ideas of beauty.

Emerging from this disruption of the artistic status quo, modern art went further in rejecting conventions and embracing innovation. The bold legacy of leading modern artists Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian and many others continues to inform visual culture today.

Find a collection of modern paintings, sculptures, prints and other fine art on 1stDibs.