John Koch

Born in Toldeo, Ohio, John Koch was mostly self-taught since the age of fourteen. His naturalistic portrait and genre paintings of New York City's elite effortlessly blend Old Master techniques with contemporary approaches towards composition and subject matter. Koch's early training consisted primarily of two summers at the artist's colony at Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he came under the influence of Charles Hawthorne. He lived for four years in Paris and recalled "the Louvre taught me my major lessons." Koch settled in New York but unlike his contemporaries was never interested in experimenting with abstraction. "I am quite visibly a realist, occupied essentially with human beings, the environments they create."

At the age of nineteen, Koch traveled to Europe for a year which laid the groundwork for a lifetime of self-teaching. While in Europe, the artist assiduously studied works by the old masters, while also culling influence from the work of Edgar Degas (1834-1917) and Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). Upon returning to the United States in 1935, he married Dora Zaslavsky, then a piano teacher at the Manhattan School of Music.

EXTENDED BIO

John Koch (August 18, 1909 – April 19, 1978) was an American painter, and an important figure in 20th century realist painting. His early work may be considered Impressionist. He is best known for his light-filled realist paintings of urban interiors, often featuring classical allusions, and set in his own Manhattan apartment.

As visible in the The Sculptor (1964, oil on canvas, 80" x 59 7/8", Brooklyn Museum), much of Koch's work is made up of portraits and social scenes, including cocktail parties and scenes with the artist at work with his models. He was a mentor of the painter Charles Pfahl (b. 1946).

REFERENCES

Hughes, Robert (January 6, 2002), A World of Grownups, Time

Johnson, Ken (December 21, 2001), Art Review; One Life in the Light, Another in the Shadows, New York Times

Kramer, Hilton (January 14, 2002), John Koch's Best Work Is With Naked Subjects, New York Observer

Lerner, Leo (February 19, 2009), The Grand Surprise: Journals of Leo Lerman, pp 463–64, Random House LLC

McKittrick, Rosemary (2005), John Koch: Painter as Recreator of Life, LiveAuctionTalk

Silver, Kenneth E. (July 2002), Metropolitan Master: John Koch, Art in America

Turner, Grady (June 3, 2011), Enigmatic Intimacy: The Interior World of John Koch, Resource Library Magazine

Winship, Frederick M. (January 15, 2002), John Koch: Salon Painter Par Excellence, UPI