Ed Adler
has had a long and prolific career as an artist. His undergraduate studies
at the University of Massachusetts were followed by a two-year stint with the
Army of Occupation in Europe, where he spent much of his time creating posters
warning GIs against the evils of sex, alcohol and Communist spies. Later,
in the 1960's, the GI Bill saw him through 5 years of study at the American Art
School and the Art Students League; it was the era of sex, drugs and rock and
roll and his paintings of the period reflected the kaleidoscopic mood.
With the end of the
Sixties, Adler saw the approaching decade of Yuppiedom and in the spirit of pragmatism
entered grad school at New York University. He never really left: after earning both
masters and Ph.D. degrees in art he stayed on to teach and remains today an Associate
Professor on the adjunct faculty. The academic world offered adventurous
opportunities: he has taught at the Sorbonne in Paris, lectured at many universities and
conducted numerous seminars and conferences on the Beat Generation, a subject in which he
is generally considered an authority, having both been a beat in his early youth and
continues to be one today, in his middle youth.
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An
interest in folk and tribal art has taken him to far reaching remote regions of
the Philippines, China, Peru, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Nepal...41 countries, so
far. He has climbed mountains, explored the Amazon, and run marathons in
New York, London, Paris and Moscow. But mostly he paints. Every day
and most nights, at studios near the seaport in Manhattan and in his home in
Westchester. The work has evolved from early Matisse-inspired paintings of
the 1950's, when he studied with his mentor and teacher Jack Lubin, a Matisse protege, through the politically and environmentally driven paintings of
the 1960's and 70's, and into the current mode of reflection on the art that made him want
to paint in the first place: the bubblegum war cards of his early childhood, the pulp
fiction cowboy novels of his teen childhood and the pinups and Felliniesque imagery of his
current childhood.
Besides
Matisse, he
has been largely influenced by Van Gogh, Picasso, and the American and British Pop Art of
the 1960's. His work has been exhibited in The Museum of Modern Art, The
Smithsonian, The Brooklyn Museum, The Los Angels County Museum, and The Santa Monica
Museum of Art. He has had many exhibitions at New York University and at galleries
throughout the country. He is represented in Europe by Joanne Eder who can be
emailed at anamericaninparis@wanadoo.fr
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