Robert Goldwater

Robert Goldwater 1907-73, American art historian, b. New York City. Goldwater taught at Queens College, N.Y., from 1934 to 1957, when he was appointed professor of fine arts at New York Univ. The same year he also became the director of the Museum of Primitive Art, New York City. Known primarily for his work in African sculpture and modern art, he is the author of Primitivism in Modern Art (rev. ed. 1967), Rufino Tamayo (1947), Jacques Lipchitz (1954), Gauguin (1957), Sculpture from Africa (1963), and What Is Modern Sculpture? (1970).

Goldwater, Robert (1907–1973). American art historian. He was born in New York and studied at Columbia College (BA 1929), Harvard University (MA 1931), and New York University (PhD 1937). From 1934 he held various teaching positions, and in 1957 he became professor of art history at New York University. He wrote mainly on late 19th- and 20th-century art, his books including Primitivism in Modern Painting (1938; revised edn., as Primitivism in Modern Art, 1967), which was a pioneering work on the subject, Gauguin (1957), What is Modern Sculpture? (1969), and the posthumously published Symbolism (1979). He was also the compiler (with Marco Treves) of an excellent anthology of artists' writings, Artists on Art: From the XIV to the XX Century (1947, 3rd edn., 1974). Goldwater was married to Louise Bourgeois.