From collection Kosti Ruohomaa Collection
Portrait of Abraham Walkowitz 4
This image shows a portrait of Russian-American Modernist painter Abraham Walkowitz as a young man holding a sharpened pencil, with a sketch of a Russian avant-garde picture in the upper corner, presumably a reference to the subject's national and artistic heritage, and the handwritten text "ART WITHOUT A XXXX". According to a label on the frame, A.S. Baylinson is the artist of the portrait, 1943 the date.
It is one of a series of several images taken by Ruohomaa of Walkowitz portraits, some showing the subject himself, posing with the paintings.
Kosti was likely assigned the Walkowitz series in 1944 when the Brooklyn Museum presented the show "One Hundred Artists and Walkowitz", which was written up by Time Magazine in an article entitled "Art: Walkowitz X 130" (Feb. 21, 1944). It described Walkowitz' exhibit as an "...unusual one-man show...--130 portraits of himself by 109 U.S. artists... ."
