Paul Resika

While still a teenager Resika studied with Sol Wilson and for three years with Hans Hofmann. He then lived and painted in Italy, returning to the United States in 1953. He served as an adjunct professor of painting and drawing at Cooper Union from 1966 until 1977 and has also taught at the Art Students League, at the Skowhegan School, and in the graduate program of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1972 he served as artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College. Between his first solo show in 1948 and his second, sixteen years later, Resika moved from abstraction to landscape and figure paintings that combine the balance of the French classic masters he admires with a structural solidity learned from Cézanne. In 1958 Resika began working directly from nature, exploring single subjects under varying conditions of light and mood. More recently, Resika has simplified his compositions, opened up space, and reduced his palette.

Virginia M. Mecklenburg Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1987)