Robert Slutzky (November 27, 1929 - May 3, 2005) was an American abstract painter and architectural theorist. He was the chair of the department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, and a critic of the International Style. His paintings were exhibited in museums on the East Coast.

Early life

Slutzky was born on November 27, 1929, in Brooklyn, New York City.^[1] He graduated from Cooper Union in 1951 and he attended Yale School of Art,^[2] where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1952 and a master's degree in 1954.^[1]

Career

Slutzky began his career by teaching architectural theory at the University of Texas at Austin, where he worked with John Hejduk, Bernhard Hoesli and Colin Rowe.^[3] With the latter, Slutzky co-authored a collection of essays in which he criticized the International Style. Slutzky later taught at Cornell University and the Pratt Institute.^[2] From 1968 to 1990, he taught at his alma mater, Cooper Union.^[1] He taught in department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania from 1990 to 2005,^[3] where he served as the chair.^[4] He received the G. Holmes Perkins Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2001.^[2]

Slutzsky was also an abstract painter,^[4] with works exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,^[2] and held by the Whitney Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.^[1][5]

Personal life and death

Slutzky was married twice; his second wife, Joan Ockman, is an architectural historian and theorist that currently teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale School of Architecture.^[6] Slutzky had a daughter, Zoe,^[2] and he resided in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.^[1]

Slutzky died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis on May 3, 2005, in Abington, Pennsylvania.^[7]

Selected works

• Slutzky, Robert; Rowe, Colin (1997). Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal, Parts I and II. Basel: Birkhäuser. ISBN 978-0817656157. OCLC 645795787.