Ilya Bolotowsky
American, born in Russia, 1907–1981
BiographyBorn in St. Petersburg, Russia, Bolotowsky was raised in Baku on the Caspian Sea. He departed from his native country on the eve of the Russian Revolution, fleeing first with his family to the Republic of Georgia, then to Constantinople. In 1923, he and his family immigrated to New York, where he received his first formal training at the National Academy of Design, from 1924 to 1930. Bolotowsky was a leading early 20th-century painter whose artistic roots lay in cubism and geometric abstraction, especially the work of Piet Mondrian. His work is a search for philosophical order through visual expression.