Born in
Vitebsk, Russian Empire, he was brought to America from the Russian Empire as a child in 1912, Solman was a prodigious draftsman and knew, in his earliest teens, that he would be an artist. He went straight from high school to the
National Academy of Design, though he says he learned more by sketching in the subway on the way back from school late at night: people "pose perfectly when they're asleep." In 1929, Solman saw the inaugural show at the
Museum of Modern Art featuring
Seurat,
Gauguin,
Van Gogh, and
Cézanne. when its other editors, art historian
Meyer Schapiro and critic
Harold Rosenberg, were still partial to
Social Realism. But Solman never believed in abstraction for abstraction's sake. "I have long discovered for myself," Solman has said, "that what we call the subject yields more pattern, more poetry, more drama, greater abstract design and tension than any shapes we may invent." In writing about a purchase of a typical 1930s Solman street scene for the Wichita Museum, director Howard Wooden put it this way: "Solman has produced the equivalent of an
abstract expressionist painting a full decade before the abstract expressionist movement came to dominate the American art scene, but without abandoning identifiable forms." In 1964,
The Times, discussing his well-known subway gouaches (done while commuting to his some-time job as a racetrack pari-mutuel clerk), called him a "Pari-Mutuel Picasso." In 1985, on the occasion of a 50-year retrospective,
The Washington Post wrote: "It appears to have dawned, at last, on many collectors that this is art that has already stood the acid test of time." is Joseph Solman died in his sleep, at his long-time home in New York City, on April 16, 2008. He was the father of economist and television commentator
Paul Solman and the retired elementary school teacher and community organizer, Ronni Solman. ==References==