Chaim & Dorothy Koppelman Foundation
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WORKS STATEMENT CURRICULUM VITAE BIOGRAPHY TRIBUTE BY D. KOPPELMAN ARTICLES
WORKS STATEMENT CURRICULUM VITAE BIOGRAPHY TERRAIN GALLERY ARTICLES
Chaim Koppelman Memorial Dorothy Koppelman Retrospective Chaim Koppelman Museo Napoleonico
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Chaim & Dorothy Koppelman Foundation
 
 

THE CHAIM AND DOROTHY KOPPELMAN FOUNDATION was established to exhibit and preserve the works of these two major 20th-century American artists. This website contains a selection of works by printmaker Chaim Koppelman (1920-2009) and painter Dorothy Koppelman (1920-2017). It presents, too, some of their powerful, profoundly thrilling writings on art, arising from their study of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism.

BEGINNING IN THE 1940s, Mr. and Mrs. Koppelman were students of the great American philosopher, poet, and critic Eli Siegel, founder of Aesthetic Realism. They tested scrupulously and valued passionately his landmark principle:

 

All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.

 

IN 1955, Dorothy Koppelman, with Chaim Koppelman and other artists and writers, opened the Terrain Gallery in New York City. This groundbreaking gallery was and is based on the principle quoted above. And when the not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism Foundation began in 1973, the Terrain became part of it. It was the Koppelmans’ tremendous desire that Aesthetic Realism be known and studied by people everywhere. The non-profit Chaim and Dorothy Koppelman Foundation exists, as well, in behalf of that purpose.

 

Visitors Comments on the recent Dorothy Koppelman Exhibition at the Terrain Gallery in New York City —
"Love the depth of your paintings and quotes!" —NYC
"Beautiful and meaningful artwork."—Brazil
"A breathtaking gallery." —NYC
"Dorothy Koppelman's work is outstanding!" —Massachusetts
"Très intéressante exposition." —France
"What a beautiful philosophy." —Canada
"Wonderful gallery where beauty lives!" —Italy
“Intensely thought provoking” —California
"I'm so glad I came here."—New York City
“Que bonita la galeria!” —Madrid
“Wow, Wow, & Wow” —New Jersey

WHITE PLANE CRASH, 1961, oil on canvas, 59 x 48 in. (detail)

ARTnews—“Dorothy Koppelman shows the arresting distinction of her own painting.... The scything blades of color in the richly textured, formidably composed Carrots; the quick, cool lyricism of Young Boy; above all, the White Plane Paintings with their dominating interplay of vigorously incised lines, sweep of color and flow of white: all these reveal Mrs. Koppelman her own painterly mistress, well at ease.”

“A description of what impelled me in the plane crash paintings is in Eli Siegel’s essay ‘Art As Rightness’: ‘Art gives a chance for everything to be right, by being seen right.’ These paintings were done from photographs of the Brooklyn plane crash, December 1960. Here, space became terrible, immediate, and snugness was shattered. The idea demanded large blank spaces directed by incisive black lines…. My belief that beauty can be found in ugliness would never have existed had I not met Aesthetic Realism. Half of my perception would not exist had I not been taught to see that the terror of the world has some real coherence with its beauty.” —DK

Here's an excerpt from the comment on LIGHT AND DARK in Chaim Koppelman's stunning pastel currently in the Terrain Gallery exhibition, Five Artists & the Opposites—

“Through the artist’s consummate technique, the substance of every object, from pitcher to pomegranate, is revealed—almost sculpted—through subtle effects of light and shadow. . . .

As his student and colleague, I know Chaim Koppelman loved these words from Eli Siegel’s Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?:

‘Does all art present the world as visible, luminous, going forth?—does art, too, present the world as dark, hidden, having a meaning which seems to be beyond ordinary perception?’ ”

—Carrie Wilson, Terrain Gallery Coordinator

UNTITLED STILL LIFE, pastel , 20 1/4 X 25 3/4 in.