It is with great feeling that we say: On October 25, 2017 Dorothy Koppelman—artist, Aesthetic Realism consultant, founding director of the Terrain Gallery, and one of the most important women in cultural history—died at the age of 97. We thank her profoundly and with love, as will people everywhere in all the years to come.

Keen original perception, courage, strength of mind, and deep human sympathy characterized both her life and her art. Studying Aesthetic Realism with its founder, Eli Siegel, beginning in 1942, she saw its truth and tremendous value, and wanted people everywhere to be able to learn what he explained: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

As she studied Aesthetic Realism, her work as a painter became among the finest produced in America in the 20th century.

We greatly treasure her straightforward, down-to-earth, subtle, deep, kind seeing—as a consultant, a teacher of the Critical Inquiry class for artists, and an invaluable, irreplaceable friend and colleague. It is our intention that the vision impelling her life—a world made kinder, more just, and beautiful through the study of Aesthetic Realism—become a reality. Dorothy Koppelman enabled thousands of lives to become better, happier, more honest and expressed, including our own. Her beautiful effect goes on.

Aesthetic Realism Foundation Faculty Bio
Selected paintings of Dorothy Koppelman from memorial exhibition
A Brief History of the Terrain Gallery