The Parrish Art Museum - East End Stories

Louis Schanker was born in the Bronx in 1903. He studied art at The Cooper Union, the Educational Alliance, and the Art Students League, and traveled through Europe from 1931 to 1933. During the 1930s, Schanker supervised several artists in the New York City mural division of the WPA. His own work included a large project in the lobby of WNYC Radio in the Municipal Building, a series of circus murals at a children’s hospital, and a mural in the Science and Health Building at the 1939 World’s Fair. He was one of the founders of the Associated American Artists and was also a founding member of “The Ten: Whitney Dissenters,” a group protesting the museum’s preference for American Scene painting and Social Realism. Ilya Bolotowsky, Mark Rothko, and Adolph Gottlieb were also part of the group, which actually began with nine members. An innovator in woodcuts and printmaking, he was also a sculptor. Starting in 1949, he had a home in Sag Harbor, and many of his sculptures came from local trees that had been cut for firewood there. In 1962, Schanker married the noted blues singer Libby Holman, and they soon purchased “Dune House” off Further Lane in East Hampton, though he continued to work at the studio in Sag Harbor until he sold the building in the mid-1970s. He divided his time among New York City, East Hampton, and Stamford, Connecticut, until his death in 1981.