Paul Resika
When he was 9, Paul Resika (1928–) began taking painting lessons, encouraged by his Russian-immigrant mother; he studied with Sol Wilson when he was 12 and, from 1947 to 1950, he studied in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with Hans Hofmann, eventually becoming Hofmann’s studio assistant. At 19, Resika had his first solo exhibition of paintings at the George Dix Gallery on Madison Avenue in New York City.
Resika traveled to Europe, settling in Venice for two years and studying independently, a self-imposed apprenticeship to the Old Masters that enriched, without cancelling out, the approach to form and structure that he absorbed from Hofmann. He returned to the United States in 1954. In 1958, he began to paint from observation outdoors, and this remains the foundation of his work, even though memory also plays a role.
Resika was a founding member of Provincetown’s Long Point Gallery. He credits Berta Walker for contributing greatly to his success, since she first began exhibiting and selling his work in 1984 as Founding Director of the Graham Modern Gallery in New York. Resika’s work can be found in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, and the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC, as well as in numerous private collections.
