Samuel Rosenberg (artist)

Samuel Rosenberg
Born	1896 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died	1972 New York City, New York, U.S.
Education	Columbian Council School, Pittsburgh, PA
Known for	Painting
Movement	abstract

Samuel Rosenberg (1896–1972) was an American artist and Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. He showed his work at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum in New York, the National Academy of Art in Washington, the Corcoran Gallery, and in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He was a beloved art teacher, and some of his students were Mel Bochner, Philip Pearlstein and Andy Warhol.

Samuel Rosenberg's parents immigrated from Austria-Hungary. His mother saw that he was interested in art early on, and she enrolled him in the Columbian Council School, which later became known as the Irene Kaufmann Settlement. Rosenberg also took art lessons from Jacob R. Coblens, who was an artist from Paris, but working in Pittsburgh. During those lessons, Rosenberg learned to draw from memory. Samuel Rosenberg spent one year at the National Academy of Design in New York, and then he came back to live in Pittsburgh. When the World War I started, he did a tour of duty in the U.S. Army.

Samuel Rosenberg started his career by painting portraits. He painted a Self-Portrait in 1919, which showed he was a confident young artist and his use of light in his paintings. In 1920 he had his first exhibition in the Carnegie International. During 1930s, Rosenberg's paintings were portraying the happiness and difficulties of life of the black and Jewish neighborhoods in the Hill District. He also painted scenes of the city, which was inspired by Pittsburgh's big hills, dirty air, uneven houses built on the hills, and the gloomy tones around him. His painting, "Eviction", of 1935, shows the impact how the Depression affected residents of the Hill District. He liked being part of the Pittsburgh community, and he used many of his paintings to show how Pittsburgh looked like before redevelopment. After World War II started, Rosenberg started to paint allegorical scenes, where he used Jewish signs. In his paintings, the artist shows human misery during the war and the events of the Holocaust. He portrayed persecution of Jews in Europe. In the 1950s, his paintings became more abstract, where he liked using light, colors, and shapes. Samuel Rosenberg painted for almost six decades in the twentieth century, during the Great Depression, and 2 World Wars. He made over 500 paintings during his 57-year career.

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