Untitled

The pedagogical differences between Ilya Bolotowsky and Josef Albers divided the students on Black Mountain College’s campus. Hired as a sabbatical replacement for the director’s position in 1946, the affable Russian émigré allowed students—such as Joseph Fiore and Kenneth Noland—freer creative rein, welcoming their experimentations with a diversity of media and fostering a collegial atmosphere.

This untitled canvas depicts an interlacing grid and areas of flat color that suggest spatial illusion, properties that reflect the influence of Bolotowsky’s mentor, Piet Mondrian. However, Bolotowsky transgresses the Dutch painter’s rigid Neoplasticism by incorporating diagonal or curved lines and muted colors. A charter member of the influential collaborative known as American Abstract Artists, Bolotowsky’s allegiance to abstraction never wavered.