Description
Lee Adler (1926–2003) was an American painter and printmaker. His papers can be found in the Archives of American Art.
Active from the mid-1960s until the 1980s, he produced over 300 paintings and 75 editions of prints found in collections of a number of museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The largest holdings of his work can be found at the Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, KS.
He was born Leo Adler in New York City to Isidor and Anna Adler, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, in 1926. There is, however, confusion about his birth year; during his artistic career, Adler consistently listed 1934 as his year of birth. According to his son, he did so in order to make himself seem like a younger artist as he was beginning his career in art. Adler graduated from James Madison High School in Brooklyn in 1942 and served in the U.S. Army between 1943 and 1946, spending the final year of his service in Japan immediately after the end of World War II. In 1948, he graduated with a BA degree in English from Syracuse University. In 1948–1949, he hitchhiked west, working at a steel mill in Chicago and then living in the bohemian artist community near Monterey, California. In 1949–50, Adler briefly pursued graduate studies in literature at the Sorbonnein before returning to New York City.
