Bolotowsky had a life-long love of classical music. Music, rhythm, and harmony informed his abstract style. The visual and thematic links between Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942-43; MoMA) and this work are apparent. In the 1940s, New York was a city vibrant with life, sounds, and colour. While Bolotowsky’s painting is purely abstract, its title hints that at its urban inspiration. The idea of the grid is synonymous with New York, the city that gave him and his family refuge in the 1920s and that came to be home. Here, the ‘City Rectangle’ is open at the edges. It seems to continue beyond the canvas edges, uncontained, and full of possibilities.
This painting was included in Ilya Bolotowsky’s first museum exhibition held at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in 1974.
City of Ambition: Artists & New York, 1900 – 1996, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York , July 3 – October 27, 1996
Black Mountain: Una Aventura Americana, Museo Nacionel Centre de Arte Reina Sofia
October 8, 2002 – January 13, 2003
Ilya Bolotowsky: Paintings from 1935-80, Washburn Gallery, New York , November 1 – December 22, 2018