Details

Name

Boris Margo

Brief Biography

1902 - 1995, Ukrainian / American

Occupation

artist, painter, printmaker, sculptor

Description

Margo was a Surrealist associated with the New York School. Born in Volochisk, a small town in Ukraine, Margo enrolled in 1919 at the Polytechnic of Art in Odessa and later in 1920s studied with the eccentric Cubist-Surrealist painter Pavel Filonov in Leningrad (today St Petersburg). In 1928 he received a certificate to work and study in Montreal, where he worked as a muralist for a year and then immigrated to New York in 1930 where he became a member of circle of artists around Mark Rothko.

Not having enough money to buy art supplies, Margo’s artistic beginnings in the USA were difficult as he worked primarily in montage, using found materials and newspaper cut-outs assembled based on the chance associations. Margo experimented with ‘decalcomania’ a technique used by some surrealist (most famously Max Ernst) artists which involves transferring a thinly applied layer of paint from one surface to another using pressure. As the first artist to experiment extensively with plastics, he invented the cellocut – a printmaking method, in which liquid plastic dissolved in acetone is poured onto a rigid support backing, where it can then be textured, raised into relief and worked with various tools. Resulting plate can be printed either as a relief or intaglio, or even both.

In the 1930s, Margo worked from a naturalistic Surrealism to a style based on organic and biomorphic forms. His mature style emerged in the early 40s as a semi-abstract blending of shapes and atmospheric spaces notable for intricacy and warm flushes of colour.