COLE, Sylvan 1918-2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born January 10, 1918, in New York, NY; died of lung cancer June 4, 2005, in New York, NY. Art gallery director, businessperson, and author. Cole was widely recognized for leading the revolution in printmaking that made prints not only a respectable form of fine art but also an affordable way for the general public to own the works of famous artists. After earning a bachelor's degree in English, with a minor in art history, in 1939, he trained to be an executive at Sears, Roebuck & Co. World War II changed these plans, and he served in the U.S. Army as an officer. When the war was over, he was hired by the Associated American Artists Gallery, later serving as its president and director from 1958 until 1983. By the 1960s, Cole had done much to make printmaking, including etchings, screen prints, and lithographs, a respectable form of art. Before Cole, most art critics disdained prints as inferior to original paintings, but Cole showed that they were high quality works of art as well. Cole himself specialized in American art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and his prints helped popularize artists ranging from Edward Hopper to David Hockney. He left Associated American in 1984 to found his own art gallery, Sylvan Cole Gallery, in Manhattan, and in 1987 also cofounded the International Fine Print Dealers Association, serving as its president from 1994 to 1997. Cole was the author of Grant Wood: The Lithographs: A Catalogue Raisonné (1984) and editor of several other art books, including Raphael Soyer: Fifty Years of Printmaking, 1917–1967 (1967) and Kleinholz Graphics: Catalogue Raisonné, 1940–1975 (1975).

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New York Times, June 9, 2005, p. A27.