Maurice Kish (1895 – 1987)
Waiting for the Bus in a Blizzard
16 x 16 inches
Oil on board
Signed and dated 1938 lower left

BIO:
Maurice Kish (1895 – 1987) Maurice Kish, painter and poet, was born in Russia. Dvinsk was one of the leading Jewish cities in Russia in the 19th century, and a center of Jewish culture and debate. It was also a poor city where an estimated 30% of the Jewish population applied for aid in 1898.

Kish immigrated to New York in his teens. He pursued studies in art at Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design, gaining a foundation solid enough to support himself as a painter and to place his work in exhibitions, by the late 1930’s, at such prestigious venues as the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.” Kish also exhibited at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, and by 1945 had exhibited 13 times at the National Academy and won 30 art prizes. He was a member of numerous art associations, including the Educational Alliance, the American Veteran Society of Artists, and the Brooklyn Art Alliance.

During the Depression Kish often portrayed “factory and street scenes in New York with the tired faces of workers revealing the weight of wage-labor upon their lives.” Kish himself was no stranger to the proletarian life – he was a skilled craft worker for decades in a factory which made glass vases. He was short and sturdy, a former amateur boxer, and also served as a dance instructor in the Catskills. In the 1970’s, at the age of 75, he was still playing handball in the famous Brighton courts. By the last decade of his life, however, he had lost his eyesight and was infirm.

Kish lived most of his adult life in Brooklyn, initially in Brownsville but mainly in Williamsburg, and then Brighton Beach where he became enchanted by Coney Island. He did multiple paintings of Coney Island, including at least three of the carousel horses in revolt (one held by the Butler Institute of American Art).

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