Biography from Michael Rosenfeld Gallery:
| A pioneer of American abstraction, Burgoyne Diller is among the most significant American artists devoted to geometric abstraction. Born in the Bronx, Diller studied at Michigan State College before returning to New York City, where he studied at the Art Students League with Jan Matulka, George Grosz and Hans Hofmann.
In 1934, he became employed by the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) and the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA). After having worked as an easel painter and a muralist, Diller was appointed Director of the New York City WPA/FAP Mural Division in 1935. During his tenure, Diller championed abstract art and oversaw the execution of more than 200 public murals. For Diller, abstraction was "the ideal realm of harmony, stability and order in which every form and spatial interval could be controlled and measured.”
He was a founding member of the American Abstract Artists group and a participant in their first exhibition at the Squibb Gallery (1937), but his affiliation with the group was short lived.
After serving in the US Navy, Diller became a professor at Brooklyn College in 1946, teaching there with Ad Reinhardt until his death. In the early 1930s, Diller’s art evolved from cubism to non-objective neoplasticism, as he developed a personal language based on three major compositional themes. These themes, which he labeled ‘First’, ‘Second’ and ‘Third,’ explored the picture plane in relation to forms in movement and/or forms in “constant opposition.”
Like Mondrian and Malevich, he executed his vision in primary colors. Creating a heroic body of avant-garde work that includes paintings, drawings, sculpture and reliefs, Diller is a vital link between American abstraction of the 1930s and minimalism of the 1950s and 1960s epitomized by artists Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly and Myron Stout.
Over the years his work has been exhibited internationally, most notably his 1990 retrospective organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work is represented in numerous museum collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery is the exclusive representative of the Estate of Burgoyne Diller. |
Biography from The Columbus Museum-Georgia:
| A painter and sculptor, Burgoyne Diller was one of the first---perhaps
the first---American artist to include geometric designs in his
work. Although known for being an artist in non-objective styles,
he was also Director of the Mural Division of the New York City Federal
Arts project until 1941. In this capacity, he found work for many
of the artists that became leading early 20th-century names such as
Arshile Gorky and Stuart Davis during this time of national economic
unrest. (1)
Diller was born in New York City and from 1928 to 1932, studied at the
Art Students League where he was influenced by Cubism and later with
Hans Hofmann, who pioneered Abstract Expressionism. In the early
1930s, Diller began making geometric art, having been influenced by the
Dutch painter, Piet Mondrian who combined vertical and horizontal lines
with bright colors. Although the Mondrian influence has been
documented, Diller later went to great pains to deny it, claiming to be
original. An equal influence might be Ad Reinhardt, a friend and
colleague at Brooklyn College. (2)
Diller was one of the original members of the American Abstract
Artists, a New York artists group dominated by geometric painters. (3)
His paintings, sculptures and constructions treated geometric forms in
three ways: as related or contiguous elements, disparate or unrelated,
and avenues of conveying much activity. Although his work was
labeled as non-objective, Diller, like other geometric abstractionists,
was attempting to find logic through visual art, and he found it
difficult to stay away totally from emotional expression. He
painted very slowly, only producing ten or twelve works a year. (4)
Source:
1. Parts of this entry comes from Daphne Deeds, "Burgoyne Diller,” entry in The American Painting Collection of Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 48. Also, Philip Larson, Burgoyne Diller, Paintings, Sculptures, Drawings
(Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 1972); Francis V. O’Connor,
“Burgoyne Diller: Geometric Abstractions and the Redress of Art in the
1930s,” Diller: The 1930s, Cubism to Abstraction (New York, NY: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, 2000).
2. Michael Rosenfeld, Burgoyne Diller: The Third Dimension, Sculpture and Drawings, 1930-1965 (New York, NY: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, 1997), 4.
3. Deeds, 48. In addition, Diller quotes, “The Whitney Museum was
the center… Now at that time there were very few abstract
painters. I happened to be one of the abstract painters that were
in that group, the original group. I think Gorky and Stuart Davis
and I am not sure who (sic) else, but there were not very many at the
time. Then that of course went out of existence.” Dr. Harlan
Phillips, Oral History Interview with Burgoyne Diller, Atlantic
Highlands, New Jersey, Friday, October 2 1964, Archives of American
Art.
4. Phillips-Diller interview, “That was an extraordinary thing in the
sense that the artists selected by them (the Whitney director and
staff) were given a schedule for working in their own studios based on
the artist's own production… if the artist said, "Well I spend three
months painting a painting," or six months or whatever, and it was a
reasonable statement, they'd accept this as the time schedule for him
to bring in a work.”
Written and submitted by Charles T. Butler, Director, Columbus Museum |
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Burgoyne Diller is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Modernism
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