Best known for his work in and promotion of Abstract Expressionism, Boston-born artist Henry Botkin was also a prolific watercolorist during the earlier stages of his productive, decades-long career. After spending seven years immersed in the Parisian art scene (a sojourn partly supported by his cousins George and Ira Gershwin), Botkin returned to the United States heavily influenced by the impressionistic flourishes of European Modernism. Henry Botkin Watercolors presents works from this post-European period of the mid-1930s and early 1940s, where the artist explored a variety of genres including landscapes, harbor scenes, and still lifes, through a Modernist lens.

Starting in the 1940s, Botkin would shift his style towards figurative abstraction, before completely abandoning representational imagery in favor of purely abstract art. This exhibition thus illuminates a little shown period of Botkin's while also highlighting a lesser-explored, but thoroughly engaging media for an artist most often associated with painting and collage.

Henry Botkin Watercolors will be on view in our upstairs gallery February 16 through March 30, 2024.