Robert Slutzky Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1929 - d. 2005

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.

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


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. 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. From 1968 to 1990, he taught at his alma mater, Cooper Union. He taught in department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania from 1990 to 2005, where he served as the chair. He received the G. Holmes Perkins Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2001.

Slutzsky was also an abstract painter, 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.


Slutzky was married twice; his second wife, Joan Ockman, was an architectural historian and theorist that currently teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. Slutzky had a daughter, Zoe, and he resided in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.

Slutzky died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis on May 3, 2005 in Abington, Pennsylvania.