The Montgomery Bus Boycott was created by Harvey Dinnerstein and his friend Bart Silberman, two socially conscious realist painters motivated by the lack of photographic evidence of the protest, in Manhattan’s Penn in 1956. A chapter on the early boycott of the early days of the early days of riding a train from the station to Alabama to portray its ingenuity.
They used pencils and charcoal to record the trials of boycott leaders, including Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., church meetings and service, and the lives of those who survived without a city bus.
“The black community welcomed us into their home, where we quickly realized that we needed to record much more than a trial,” held at the Montgomery Museum of Art in 2006. I am writing in the catalog at the exhibition of their paintings. Deciding to attract these civilians, they have become a major subject of our subsequent efforts. “
Dinnerstein sketched the meditative Rosa Parks, whose boycott was caused by refusing to give up a seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus. In his portrait, she has the Bible and appears to have her eyes closed. He drew a group of about 12 men and women walking together on crutches, with unknown destinations. People marching; men talking on the street. Two men playing chess at a hairdresser.
These drawings were one of the most famous works of Mr. Dinnerstein’s long career, devoting himself to figurative realism and resisting Abstract Expressionism, which began to flourish in the early 1950s.
“They have an extraordinary humanity,” said Heather Campbell Coil, curator of American art. Delaware Art Museum, The person who exhibited the paintings of the two men in 2018 said in a telephone interview. “Walking people draw me — I see a middle-aged black man crouching in the heat of Montgomery because he’s not on the bus.”
In June 1968, Dinnerstein visited Washington for Esquire magazine. Poor people’s march — An attempt organized by Dr. King, who was assassinated in April, to seek financial justice for those living in poverty.
“The last time I was so close to the’movement’was Montgomery, Alabama, 12 years ago,” he writes. “One night I drew a 10-year-old daughter of one of the organizers. The child is 22 today and I don’t think her dream has come true in any way.”
In addition to his painting and drawing work, longtime art teacher Dinnerstein died in Brooklyn on June 21st. He was 94 years old.
His death in the hospital was confirmed by his niece, concert pianist Simone Dinnerstein.
Harvey Dinnerstein was born on April 3, 1928 in Brooklyn. His father, Louis, was a pharmacist. His mother, Sarah (Kobilansky) Dinnerstein, was a housewife. At the age of 14, he enrolled in Music Arts High School, now Fiorello H. La Guardia Music Arts High School (where he met Mr. Silberman), and soon learned that he would become an artist.
“I’ve never done anything other than an artist. Well, I’m probably a Brooklyn Dodgers shortstop around 1939.” He spoke last year in an interview with Linea, an online journal of the Art Student League...
He participated in the Art Student League and studied under a Russian-born painter. Moses SoyerHe graduated in 1950, before enrolling in the Tyler School of Arts and Architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia. He was drawn into the Army during the Korean War and served the state in Fort Monmouth, NJ, where he drew a soldier’s greeting card. ..
Dinnerstein grew up in the early 1950s. Not driven by Abstract Expressionism, he followed the artistic traditions of realists such as Francisco Goya and Honoré Daumier.
“It was the moment people said they had to think about de Kooning,” he said. Gerald Peters Gallery In Manhattan, on behalf of Mr. Dinnerstein, he spoke in a telephone interview. “And he definitely wasn’t thinking about de Kooning.”
Instead, Mr. Dinnerstein primarily portrayed life around him: outside brownstone like himself in the subway, parks, and Brooklyn. In a rare attempt to portray a celebrity, Dinnerstein was commissioned by Sports Illustrated in 1974 to spread the Yankee Hall of Fame Joe DiMaggio in his familiar and wide-ranging position shortly after hitting the ball. I drew it on the published image. He also won a Grammy Award in 1973 for the best album cover of “Siegel-Schwallband” by the Chicago blues band of the same name.
Mr. Dinnerstein was sometimes his own subject — for example, sketching his fellow riders to portray himself working in the subway.
In one of his subway paintings, the figures around him include a man holding a small child, a young woman with a bicycle, a construction worker, and a guide dog. .. They don’t care about Mr. Dinnerstein.
In another example, the daughter is sleeping and spreads over her mother’s feet.
“The atmosphere created by the glittering overhead lighting and the sterile environment made of plastic and stainless steel that are too familiar are perfectly captured,” said artist and art critic D. Dominique Lombardi. Is writing in the New York Times. 1999.
Dinnerstein said he learned about people that he wasn’t taught at art school on the subway.
“The immediacy of reacting directly to a human subject in a moving train forces us to develop the power of perception and memory,” he said in the 2018 exhibition catalog. “Harvey Dinnerstein’s New York” At the Gerald Peters Gallery. “The subway has also revealed a view of the diversity of urban life that has shaped my artistic vision over the years.”
His wife, art historian Royce (Beerke) Dinnerstein, also appears in his work. On a winter day, her scarf was fluttering in the wind. He also portrayed her alone during the Covid-19 pandemic — in her portrait, her hair sticking out from under her hat and in her hospital treating her pneumonia. Because of her nose has an oxygen cannula.
“The world I’m used to has changed dramatically with an invisible virus. It’s very difficult to navigate this unfamiliar terrain.” He wrote to Linea last year. “But after a while of uncertainty, when I picked up a drawing tool or brush, I found great comfort, and somehow a creative spark came back. The deadly virus. Beyond the shadows, the affirmation of life. “
Dinnerstein is a respected teacher in the Art Student League for 40 years and only stopped when the pandemic broke out in 2020. He also taught at the School of Visual Arts from 1965 to 1980 and at the National Academy of Design from 1975 to 1992.
“If you’re serious, he gave you a lot of rope,” he said. Painter Jerry Weiss Studied under Dinnerstein in the Art Student League. “He came and criticized and complimented me, but I saw him barbarizing other students.
Mr. Dinnerstein has survived by his wife. Daughter, Rachel Dinnerstein. My son Michael. Brother Simon, a figurative artist.
One of Dinnerstein’s most exciting works is a tribute to those lost in the 9/11 attack, drawn in 2003. Partly based on a procession of candles that lost 12 men outside the local fire department, lined up in a collapsed building with firefighters, nuns, men with children on their shoulders, and several others. Faces that have candles that illuminate their downcast.
“With a strength reminiscent of the dramatically illuminated 17th-century composition by Georges de La Tour and Caravaggio’s followers.” Gabriel R. Weisberg wrote in FineArt Connoisseur The 2008 magazine, “Dinnerstein, creates a moving parable of hope that can come from a disaster.”
