Seymour Drumlevitch

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Seymour Drumlevitch (American, 1923-1989) was a painter who was born on July 9, 1923 in Brooklyn, NY to Morris Drumlevitch and Anna (née Brackup) Drumlevitch and his older siblings included, Beatrice and Arthur. He attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan and later studied at the New School for Social Research in New York, taking art classes at the Cooper School of Art and Architecture. In 1947, he and his wife, artist Harriet Greif (American, 1924-1988), moved to Buffalo where Drumelvitch taught as an instructor at the Albright Art School, the University at Buffalo, the State University College for Teachers at Buffalo and the Jewish Community Center. In 1950, Drumlevitch won the prestigious Prix de Rome award from the American Academy in Rome.

Nationally significant, Drumlevitch was a protégé of Joseph Hirshhorn. Hirshhorn acquired many of his works, which are now in the collection of the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. During the early part of his career, Drumlevitch was represented by the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art since 1948.

In 1956, he moved to New York City where he began work at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School, until he and his family moved back to Buffalo in 1959 to resume his position as a professor of painting and design at the University at Buffalo. He taught there until 1983 and held his final exhibit in 1989 just months before his death on September 30, 1989.

Drumlevitch was a prolific abstract painter of international renown, whose work sometimes incorporated Jewish themes (synagogues, biblical themes, tallit, torah). His style has incorporated oil paintings, watercolor/gouche and ink drawings, as well as the use of mixed media and collage. One of the most respected Buffalo artists of the later part of the twentieth century, Drumlevitch’s career was the subject of a major retrospective show at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in 1988. It is understood that he had won so many prizes in the Western New York annual exhibitions that at a certain point, his works were allowed to be exhibited, but they would not be considered part of the competition for awards. Locally his art is part of the collections at the Albright Knox and the Burchfield Penney and can also be viewed at the Jewish Community Center and at Temple Beth Zion.

(Sources: The Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY "Seymour Drumlevitch, 1923-1989"; and jewishbuffalohistory.org, "People A-Z / Seymour Drumlevitch, Artist, 1923-1989; Overview"; familyserach.com, “Seymour Drumlevitch: Social program Document, United States, Social Security Numerical Identification Files (NUMIDENT), 1936-2007”.)

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