Thomas Nozkowski Abstract Sculptures

Thomas Edward Nozkowski (American, 1944-2019). Original mixed media abstract composition art utilizing colored rock gravel. Titled, "Gravel Piece." Hand signed on verso, dated 5/73. Provenance: Collection of the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, Florida (Museum Inventory No. t.13.2000.053.) Thomas Nozkowski was an American contemporary painter. He achieved a place of prominence through his small scale paintings and drawings that push the limits of visual language. His work appeared in more than 300 exhibitions over the past 40 years. He had more than 70 solo exhibitions, and 24 of his paintings were featured in a large-scale retrospective in 1987 at Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC Nozkowski was born in Teaneck, New Jersey and raised in Dumont, where he graduated from Dumont High School in 1961. He spent his youth in the New Jersey suburbs, admiring New York culture from afar before moving there after graduating high school. His father worked in an Alcoa Aluminum factory and then as a postman. His mother worked in factories and as a bookkeeper. One of his aunts was a schoolteacher who gave him and his younger sister art supplies. When he was a senior in high school he won a scholarship to attend a painting class at New York University's School of Education, where he studied with Robert Kaupelis and Hale Woodruff. While he earned his BFA at Cooper Union, Nozkowski was making sculpture. He graduated in 1967. He later transitioned to large scale abstract expressionist painting, and exhibited some of his earliest works in group shows at the storied Betty Parsons Gallery. Richard Tuttle had his first show a year after he began assisting Betty Parsons. Thomas Nozkowski worked for her after graduating from Cooper Union. Between 1949 and 1951. In the course of 36 years, the Betty Parsons Gallery mounted important early shows of Robert Rauschenberg, Kenzo Okada, Richard Pousette-Dart, Leon Polk Smith, Forrest Bess, Sonia Sekula, Herbert Ferber, Seymour Lipton, Eduardo Paolozzi, Alexander Liberman, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Richard Lindner, Agnes Martin, Ellsworth Kelly, John Walker, Patrick Ireland...