Abbo Ostrowsky

1889 - 1975

BiographyAbbo Ostrowsky, painter, graphic artist, educator, and founder and director of the Educational Alliance Art School, was born in Elizavetgrad, Russia on October 23, 1889. He was educated at the Odessa Art School under Kiriak Konstantinovich Kostandi and in 1906 was the assistant director of the People’s Art Traveling Exhibitions, which brought art to the Ukrainian provinces of Khagan, Poltava and Kiev. This experience helped to shape Ostrowsky’s belief in the social value of art and the importance of supporting one’s community. After arriving in the United States in 1908, Ostrowsky studied at the National Academy of Design, New York, under George W. Maynard and Charles Yardley Turner. In 1914, Ostrowsky started offering free art classes, which became the East Side Art School, at the University Settlement House. In 1917, the Educational Alliance offered its facilities to the East Side Art School, including some financial assistance. Ostrowsky designed the Educational Alliance Art School to foster the needs of the immigrant and to encourage his students’ abilities. He taught his students how to draw inspiration from their environment while also preparing them to enter the American mainstream and insisted that his students reflect their new American and their traditional ethnic heritage. He stressed draftsmanship and fundamental basics in training his students but moved away from the academic tradition of having his students draw from plaster casts. He instead brought in neighborhood residents to serve as models, believing that involving the immigrant community living around the Educational Alliance in the students’ work would both stimulate the artistic progress of students and the social progress of the community. He believed that the source of an artist’s strength should be drawn from the life and cultural tradition of his community. Once the Art School was part of the Educational Alliance, art scholarships for gifted art students were provided in part by the “Workers Art Scholarship Committee”, which was organized by Ostrowsky in 1922 and which drew upon the support of the labor unions. Ostrowsky believed that identification with one's own Jewish cultural heritage was expressed by commitment to the community through support for organized labor and political reform. The school served in particular the needs of the Lower East Side neighborhood, especially the immigrant community, and quickly established a reputation of quality art education, producing alumni such as Chaim Gross, the Soyer brothers, Philip Evergood, Jo Davidson, Peter Blume, Louise Nevelson, Leonard Baskin, Jacob Epstein, and others. In 1918, Ostrowsky organized an exhibition of student work to be held at the Educational Alliance, thereby instituting a tradition of yearly exhibitions, which were often held in prominent venues. In 1954, he presented the art collections of the Educational Alliance Art School to the Jewish Museum for an exhibit, which was very successful. Much of Ostrowsky’s work consisted of naturalistic portraits and etchings of the streets and people of the Lower East Side. His artworks were exhibited in galleries across the U.S. and in England and France, among them the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Chicago Art Museum, and Museum of Western Art, Moscow. From 1915-1917, he participated in exhibitions sponsored by the short-lived Peoples’ Art Guild at various settlement and neighborhood houses in the Bronx and Manhattan and exhibited his work in several shows with the Jewish Arts Center in New York. He held one-man shows at Anderson Galleries, 1924, U.S. National Museum and Smithsonian Institute, 1931, and Keppel Galleries, 1937. Among the permanent collections he is represented in are the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Museum of Western Art, Moscow, American Federation of Labor, Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the 1930s, he became a member of the American Artists’ Congress. He was appointed chairman of the Visual Arts Committee of the National Federation of Settlements in 1936 and also served as the chairman of the Visual Arts Committee of United Neighborhood Houses of New York. He received the Kate W. Arms Award from the Society of American Etchers in 1937.

Abbo Ostrowsky retired from the Educational Alliance Art School in 1955, although he continued to be affiliated with the school until his death on June 19, 1975. [YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Center for Jewish History]

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