Edward Cowley (1925 - 2014)

Isotopic Matriculation, c. late 1940s, mixed media on Masonite, signed lower right, 15 x 18 inches, label verso reads: "Isotopic Matriculation / Ed Cowley / Price $25", presented in its original frame

$5250

Edward P. Cowley was an American painter, stained glass artist, and influential professor whose career helped shape the development of modern art education in New York’s capital region. A Buffalo native, Cowley served in the 94th Infantry Division under George S. Patton in Europe during World War II. His military service profoundly affected his worldview and later informed the emotional intensity and social consciousness of his artwork. With its dystopian landscape, shadows of bombers, barred window, skeletal trees and cross, and distant mushroom cloud, Isotopic Matriculation is one of the most direct references Cowley made to his wartime experiences. The mysterious title likely refers to the system of combining isotopes for the creation of an atomic bomb, which was a major cause of the existential dread brought about by the advent of the Nuclear Age.

Cowley studied at the Albright Art School and after returning from the war, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Buffalo State College in 1948 and a Masters of Fine Art from Columbia University in 1949, where he was exposed to the modernist ideas that would help define his artistic career. After first teaching at The Milne School, Cowley joined the faculty of the University at Albany (then the State University College for Teachers), eventually becoming chairman of the art department from 1956 through 1975. During his tenure he recruited an exceptional faculty of artists, historians, and printmakers, transforming the department into one of the strongest public university art programs in the Northeast. In 1955, he studied at the National College of Art in Ireland as a Ford Foundation Fellow. In 2012, the Albany Center Gallery mounted the retrospective “Ed Cowley: Then & Now,” celebrating more than six decades of artistic achievement. Cowley's works are in the collections of the Albany Institute of History & Art, the Schenectady Museum, the Smith College Museum of Art, the Munson-Williams-Procter Institute, the Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University, and the Berkshire Museum. He is listed in Who Was Who in American Art and other standard references.