Harry Kramer’s work and his achievements represent a deepening commitment to and expansive understanding of the tradition of Abstract Expressionism in America and its European antecedents.
Public recognition came in the 1970s with solo exhibitions at New York’s Brata and 55 Mercer Street galleries, pivotal alternative spaces. Kramer’s recognition followed with the 1983 exhibition “Six Painters” at the Hudson River Museum and sustained visibility and critical press through solo and group shows nationwide, most notably at Greunebaum, Ameringer Yohe, and Charles Cowles galleries. Orca (1972), a major large-scale work, is permanently displayed at the Federal Courthouse in Brooklyn.
Art historian Dore Ashton observed that Kramer is:
“a lover of paint and a lover of nature. But it doesn’t stop there. It takes many years to get acquainted with the myriad effects available in the repertory provided by oil paint. Kramer has stayed the course and is now a mature painter thoroughly acquainted with each turn of the brush and every surface possible for the painter who knows how to build, stroke by stroke, from the ground up.
[Kramer’s paintings] that have to be looked at with keen attention, from the ground up, literally. If Kramer is convinced that process is reality, the viewer must engage with the process. In the old days, the notion of delectation was enfolded in esthetics. That notion has been rudely expulsed in recent years. In Kramer’s work it can be retrieved. And should be.”
A BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art (1962) and an MFA from Yale University (1965), Kramer’s distinctions include an Alliance Française prize (1964); a U.S. Steel Company grant (1970); New York State CAPS Fellowships (1973, 1977); a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1982); and grants from the Robert Lehman Foundation (2013) and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2014).
Kramer’s work is represented in numerous public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, The Hudson River Museum, the Detroit Institute of Art, The Brooklyn Federal Courthouse, Chase Manhattan Bank and Philip Morris, among many others.
Kramer served as Professor of Art, Queens College, City University of New York, and a visiting artist at New York University School of the Arts, the New York Studio School and the Yale School of Art at Norfolk, CT. He lives and works in Lakeville, Connecticut.