This retrospective, Abe Blashko, A Ninetieth Birthday Celebration, June 3 through 26, 2010, at the Susan Teller Gallery, features drawings and prints from 1934 to 2008. A Washington State native, Abe Blashko (born 1920) is largely self-taught. Inspired by the Mexican muralists, he created a body of work reflecting the world and its foibles. At the time of his one-man show at the Seattle Art Museum in 1938 Kenneth Callahan, of the Post Intelligencer, wrote “It is not often that a young artist appears on the horizon of art fully developed, one can almost say, over night.  Abe Blashko is just 18 years of age. From several standpoints, his art is remarkable.”

After coming to New York City in 1943 Blashko made a career in illustration. He contributed to The New Masses; he published Saint Mark’s Place, East Village Scenes, in 1995. The drawing Judge Reading, 1937, appeared in The New Yorker magazine, December 22/29, 1997. Blashko taught at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art, New Jersey, from 1988 to 1991.

Included are some of his earliest, most bizarre images including The Puppet, Le Miserable, and The Man Who Laughs, all 1939. Three pastels from the Ratmen Series (including The Golem) are show as well as drawings from his 1995 publication, Saint Mark's Place. Also included are political images; there is an especially biting Cheney With a Spare Heart, 2008.

In 2000 Blashko was a panelist at the symposium, North American Prints and Printmakers, 1913-1947, at Syracuse University, NY; his work was in featured the related exhibition, as well as the publication, North American Prints, 1913-1947, An Exhibition at Century’s End, 2006.

In addition to the Seattle Art Museum and Syracuse University, work by Abe Blashko is in the collections of the Portland Art Museum, Oregon; the Wolfsonian Museum, Miami Beach; the Library of Congress and the National Gallery of Art; the Columbus Museum of Art; the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College; the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University; and University College, London.