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.

Comments on the recent Dorothy Koppelman Exhibition at the Terrain Gallery NYC —

"Love the depth of your paintings and quotes! Thank you." —New York City

"Beautiful and meaningful artwork."—Brazil

"A breathtaking gallery." —New York City

"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

BLUE PLANE CRASH, 1961, oil on canvas, 62 x 68 in.

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

“In Confrontation, an artist and his work look at each other. This print has to do with a person wanting to see himself as an object. I asked Dorothy to take a photograph of me and I did a photo-etching of myself looking at myself in profile.“ —CK
Eli Siegel’s poem “The Print,” Chaim Koppelman wrote, “gets to the heart of what has impelled me and other printmakers, with beautiful precision, depth and music”:

Can dark and light
Show wrong and right?
—And round and straight
Show love and hate?
—And dim and clear
Show hope and fear?

CONFRONTATION, 1987, color etching (unique proof)