Carl Robert HOLTY

A significant figure in the development of abstract art in America, Carl Holty was born in Freiburg, Germany, of American parents and grew up in Milwaukee. His initial art instruction took place at the Milwaukee Normal School, where he studied with teachers who had trained in Munich. He continued his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1919 and, after a summer at the artists' colony in Saugatuck, Michigan, he moved to New York, where he enrolled at Parsons School of Design and the National Academy of Design, both in New York. Holty briefly considered attending medical school at the completion of this training, but receiving a legacy from his grandfather, he left for Munich in 1926 to further his artistic career.

Having grown up speaking German, Holty easily adapted to life in Munich. He enrolled in Hans Hofmann's school, where he was introduced to the principles of modernist drawing and painting that he would rely on for the rest of his career. Holty recalled that Hofmann taught him about color and painting, and "first opened my eyes to the plastic nature of drawing." 1 Not interested in the German expressionist style popular in Munich at the time, Holty focused on a study of Cubism, a style that he had fully adopted by 1928. In this year, Holty began spending most of his time in Paris, where he became part of the American art colony active in the French capital. An artist who felt at home in the cosmopolitan community of Paris, Holty was taken in by many of the major figures in the international avant-garde. He developed friendships with Mondrian, Miró, and Delaunay. Due to the sponsorship of Delaunay, Holty was elected to membership in Abstraction-Création, becoming one of the only American artists to belong to this revolutionary organization, which included such illustrious artists as Jean Hélion, Theo van Doesburg, Albert Gleize, and Jean Arp.

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