Noted color-pioneering photographer Marie Cosindas passed away on May 25th at the age of 93. She earned fame and recognition in the 1960's for her still lifes and color portraits.
Born in Boston in 1925, she studied at the Modern School of Fashion Design and attended evening drawing and painting classes at the Boston Museum School. On a trip to Greece in 1959, Cosindas realized the photographs she was using as studies for her paintings could stand on their own as finished products. Shortly after, Ansel Adams recommended her to the Polaroid Corporation, which sought to test a new instant-developing color film. Her photographs were a success, and by the end of the 1960s she had received a Guggenheim grant to continue her work in color, a Rockefeller grant, and honorary degrees form Philadelphia Moore College of Art and the Art Institute of Boston.
In 2013 Cosindas was the subject of a retrospective at the Amon Carter Museum, Forth Worth. In addition to her first two solo shows at MoMA and the MFA Boston in 1966, and her inclusion in John Szarkowski’s 1978 landmark exhibition Mirrors and Windows at MoMA, other major exhibitions of her work have been held at the Art Institute of Chicago; the International Center of Photography, New York; and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.
Some of this information came from the Bruce Silverstein Gallery, who represented her work.
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