DOROTHY KOPPELMAN

CHAIM KOPPELMAN

DOROTHY KOPPELMAN—Paintings, Prints, Drawings

Now at the Terrain Gallery —141 Greene St in SoHo NYC — Wed, Fri, Sat 1 - 5 PM

THE CHAIM AND DOROTHY KOPPELMAN FOUNDATION was established to exhibit and preserve the works of these two major 20th-century American artists. This website contains a selection of works by printmaker Chaim Koppelman (1920-2009) and painter Dorothy Koppelman (1920-2017). It presents, too, some of their powerful, profoundly thrilling writings on art, arising from their study of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism.

BEGINNING IN THE 1940s, Mr. and Mrs. Koppelman were students of the great American philosopher, poet, and critic Eli Siegel, founder of Aesthetic Realism. They tested scrupulously and valued passionately his landmark principle:

All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.

IN 1955, Dorothy Koppelman, with Chaim Koppelman and other artists and writers, opened the Terrain Gallery in New York City. This groundbreaking gallery was and is based on the principle quoted above. And when the not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism Foundation began in 1973, the Terrain became part of it. It was the Koppelmans’ tremendous desire that Aesthetic Realism be known and studied by people everywhere. The non-profit Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman Foundation exists, as well, in behalf of that purpose.

Comments on the Dorothy Koppelman Exhibition—

"Love the depth of your paintings and quotes! Thank you." —New York City

"Beautiful and meaningful artwork."—Brazil

"A breathtaking gallery." —New York City

"Dorothy Koppelman's work is outstanding!" —Massachusetts

"Très intéressante exposition." —France

"What a beautiful philosophy." —Canada

"Wonderful gallery where beauty lives!" —Italy

“Intensely thought provoking” —California

"I'm so glad I came here."—New York City

“Que bonita la galeria!” —Madrid

“Wow, Wow, & Wow” —New Jersey

DOROTHY KOPPELMAN

**BLUE PLANE CRASH, 1961, oil on canvas, 62 x 68 in.**

ARTnews—“Dorothy Koppelman shows the arresting distinction of her own painting.... The scything blades of color in the richly textured, formidably composed Carrots; the quick, cool lyricism of Young Boy; above all, the White Plane Paintings with their dominating interplay of vigorously incised lines, sweep of color and flow of white: all these reveal Mrs. Koppelman her own painterly mistress, well at ease.”

“A description of what impelled me in the plane crash paintings is in Eli Siegel’s essay ‘Art As Rightness’: ‘Art gives a chance for everything to be right, by being seen right.’ These paintings were done from photographs of the Brooklyn plane crash, New Year’s, 1961. Here, space became terrible, immediate, and snugness was shattered. The idea demanded large blank spaces directed by incisive black lines…. My belief that beauty can be found in ugliness would never have existed had I not met Aesthetic Realism. Half of my perception would not exist had I not been taught to see that the terror of the world has some real coherence with its beauty.” —DK

CHAIM KOPPELMAN

CORRIERE DELLA SERA on the major exhibition in Rome's Museo Napoleonico, "Napoleon Entering New York" —“Koppelman, considered one of the greatest American printmakers, explores the figure of Napoleon with a profundity that derives from his study of Aesthetic Realism.”

“In Napoleons on Alligators the high and mighty are comfortably riding the lowest and most primitive of beings, and the alligators feel they’re doing useful work…. Napoleon Bonaparte is a subject I keep digging into….It began when I drew a profile of him in my geography book when I was nine years old. In an Aesthetic Realism Art Inquiry, Eli Siegel described an intention I had had for many years….I was dealing with the problem of the individual and democracy. Napoleon, he said, represented the pushing sense of one's individuality, the Emperor in oneself, and also the desire for democracy.” —CK