Biography
Sol Wilson (1896-1974)
Solomon “Sol” Wilson was born in Vilna, Poland. His father was a lithographer and worked in his shop in his teenage years. Sol Wilson immigrated to America at around the age of 15 and settled in New York City. He worked in New York as an apprentice jewelry polisher, a doll-face painter, a photograph developer and retoucher, and a monitor at the National Academy of Design. At night he studied at the Cooper Union and later at the National Academy and the Ferrer School with George Bellows and Robert Henri. He lived predominantly in New York, but also spent time in Provincetown, Massachusetts and Rockport, Maine.
Wilson’s teaching positions included the Y.M.H.A., the School of Art Studies, American Artists School and the Art Students League in New York. He was also a W.P.A. muralist. His works are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Phillips Collection, the Brooklyn Museum and the Library of Congress.
Wilson's work has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Institute, the Corcoran Gallery, the National Academy of Design, the Library of Congress, and the Whitney Museum, among other places. In the summer of 1974, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum paid tribute to Wilson’s career as artist and teacher and service to the institution with a one-man exhibition of his work. Wilson was also one of forty-seven artists included in the original "Advancing American Art" exhibition organized by the U.S. State Department in 1946.
Sol Wilson died in New York City in 1974, at 81.