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Born in Russia, Ilya Bolotowsky lived through World War I and the Russian Revolution, then fled to the United States while still a teenager. “After I went through a lot of violent historical upheavals in my early life, I came to prefer a search for an ideal harmony and order,” he said. His work, a search for order through visual expression, embraced Cubism and Geometric Abstraction and was much influenced by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian.
Bolotowsky was one of the founding members of the American Abstract Artists, a cooperative formed to promote the interests of abstract painters and to increase understanding between themselves and the public. It was during this period that Bolotowsky came under the influence of Mondrian and the principles of Neoplasticism, a movement that advocated for ideal order in the visual arts. Bolotowsky
adopted Mondrian’s use of horizontal and vertical geometric pattern alongside a palette restricted to primary colors and neutrals.