Claire Blitz

CLAIRE BLITZ BIOGRAPHY

1910-1998

Claire Blitz's life work showed a fascinating progression through time.  As a young woman in New York City, she designed textiles at Countess Mara, and worked in batik, while painting early abstractions in oil.  Later series in acrylic, painted in Washington D.C., include an Op Art Circle series, a Planetary series, (influenced by the moon walks of the day), and an enigmatic Egyptian series, often on shaped canvases. 

Blitz's exhibitions include the U.S. State Department and Congressional Offices, Baltimore Museum of Art, Decordova Museum, Howard University, National Institute of Health, Copley Society of Boston, Cosmos and Arts Clubs of Washington, the Austrian Embassy, and the Office of the District of Columbia Commissioner of the Arts.

Claire Blitz was born in Russia in 1910, and came to New York as a young girl.  She was active in the New York Art Student's League and the WPA Era in the 30's.  She received a Guggenheim Foundation Scholarship from the New York School of Applied Design for Women.  She studied at Hunter College, and later on, she would receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from George Washington University in D.C.  Blitz also studied painting at the American University in Washington.

At the same time Claire managed to raise two families.  She married the photographer Sam Brody in N.Y., and had two children, Mady and Julian, both of whom had their portraits painted by the famed painter Alice Neel.  Claire moved to LA and worked in an aircraft plant in support of the war effort, and then returned to N.Y.  She divorced Brody, and married Murray Blitz, an engineer, with whom she had three children, Marc, Valerie, and Ava, all born and raised in Washington D.C., where Murray worked.  Claire also lived in New Mexico and Arizona.  She died in California in 1998.

Claire Blitz's paintings show an exciting personal, autobiographical, and universal growth, at a time when women artists did not receive their due.