Arthur Cohen

MacMillan Wharf , 1992, Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts seascape

1992

Born in Manhattan in 1928 but raised in the Bronx, Cohen drew prodigiously as a child. After the war he took classes at Cooper Union and the Arts Students League. He remained in New York City his entire life with the exception of the time he spent in Provincetown, often upwards of 5 months of the year. Considering himself an outsider to New York’s 50s and 60s art scene, Cohen painted to please himself. His modest interiors of his wife Elizabeth, an accomplished concert pianist, capture the elegance and intensity of intimate music-making silhouetted against a flood of reflected light. His iconic Provincetown landscapes are filaments of land wedged between expanses of sea and sky depicting a place outside time. Cohen died in 2012. His legacy is a body of work built of transparent layers of paint and thought, allowing us to believe that the moment will go on forever. Cohen’s work has been collected by major museums and corporations, as well as noted contemporary artists. Always reticent to put his approach into words, Cohen once explained that “The paint is its own subject, and light is almost all of the answer. Once I’m into the work, light becomes paint and a pathway to the painting.”