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Sigmund M. Abeles

Contemporary printmaker, sculptor
United States
b. b. 1934
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Sigmund Abeles was born in New York City in 1934, however he was raised in South Carolina. He received no art training until his high school years, when he was mentored by the wood sculptor Truman Moore Senior, who later referred him to Gerard Francis Tempest. He attended the University of South Carolina for pre-medical studies, but switched to art studied fairly quickly. It was at this time he met fellow artist Jasper Johns, who would be a lifelong friend to him. In 1952, Abeles spent a semester at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, studying commercial art. However, in 1954, Abeles decided to fully pursue art and attended the Art Students League of New York. The very next year, he received a scholarship to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where he worked with Edwin Dickinson and Isabel Bishop. He received his MFA in Painting in one year after received a scholarship to Columbia University in 1957.

Abeles’s work focuses on the life cycle and is highly informed by drawing, although he also works in pastels, oils, graphic media, and sculpture. Abeles works full-time in his New York City and upstate New York studios after teaching for 27 years at the University of New Hampshire; he is now Professor Emeritus.

Madison Duran ‘20
April 2019

Sources:
“Biography | United States | Sigmund Abeles, Artist.” Sigmundabeles,
www.sigmundabeles.net/short-biography.
“Sigmund Abeles.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Mar. 2019,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Abeles.