Sylvia Wald New York (1915-2011) abstract, 1958 ink and wash on paper Signed and dated lower left. Biography from the Archives of askART: Abstract painter, constructivist sculptor Sylvia Wald was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1915 and was the daughter of Harry F. and Tillie (Weiner) Wald. She studied at the Moore Institute of Art there, but did not graduate, hitchhiking instead to New York City in the late 1930s. Young and talented, she caught a break when she was only twenty-three, and New York City's ACA Gallery gave her a one-person show in both media after she won their national competition in painting and sculpture in 1939. The prize and subsequent successful exhibition led to even greater success with the artist exhibiting in the 1940s at such prestigious institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. During the Depression, Wald taught elementary school art through a Philadelphia WPA project - a work she continued after moving to New York in 1937. The World War II years saw Wald in Louisville, Kentucky with her husband, Alter Weiss, a physician assigned to Nichols General Hospital, then an army hospital. She learned the silk-screen process in one day by observing artist Harry Gottlieb, and continued to make prints during her four-year stay in Kentucky. For four years she worked from her dining room producing prints from her earlier sketches. She participated in the 1944 exhibition, "100 Fine Prints of the Year." The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., acquired one of her works from the show. Wald returned to New York after the war, living and painting in a country setting. She was active, accomplished and productive in the 1950s in terms of exhibitions, prizes and recognition. She was included in the "Fifty Years of American Art" exhibition put on by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1955. But Wald was thrown for an emotional loop by the 1963 death of her husband, and sought escape from her suffering by travel to Europe for the first time. She would return there in 1967, visiting France, Greece and Spain. These trips began the first tentative steps toward an eventual new life of world-traveler in 1969, when remarried, Wald visited not only Central and South America, Canada and France, but the Far EastIndia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, China and Thailand. Perhaps as a result of her exposure to and assimilation of the East, Wald's free-standing collage constructions grew larger, utilizing such airy materials and imagery as bamboo, string, wire, birds and feathers. Since 1939, the artist has taken part in more than fifty exhibitions, including the National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome, Italy, 1957; Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico City, 1959; Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1975; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1991; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, also in 1991. Sylvia Wald's work is in the collections of major institutions, including the five major New York City museumsthe Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum; as well as the National Gallery in Washington, DC; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England and National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Source: Jules and Nancy Heller, "North American Women Artists in the 20th Century" Western Kentucky University: URL: http://www.wku.edu/Library/onlinexh/kwa/wald.html 25 1/4"H x 19 1/4"W(sight), 29 3/4"H x 23 3/4"W(frame)