Max Kozloff (1933–2025): A Visionary Critic, Artist, and Chronicler of Modernity New York, NY — Max Kozloff, the incisive critic, prolific writer, and quietly brilliant artist, passed away at his New York home on April 6, 2025, at the age of 91.
A towering figure in postwar American art criticism, Kozloff’s penetrating insights and dual life as both observer and creator left a mark on modern and contemporary art discourse.
Born in Chicago in 1933, Kozloff’s early immersion in the Art Institute of Chicago shaped his lifelong devotion to visual culture. After moving to New York in 1959, he emerged as a formidable voice, serving as an art critic for The Nation (1961–1968) and later as a contributing and executive editor at Artforum (1963–1976). His 1973 essay, “American Painting During the Cold War,” remains a seminal critique, boldly linking Abstract Expressionism to the era’s political currents.
Kozloff was never content to merely analyse; he was also an artist of uncommon sensitivity. His street photography and portraiture—exhibited at Holly Solomon Gallery, Marlborough, and the Art Institute of Chicago—revealed an acute awareness of the fragile, fleeting exchanges between photographer and subject. Less public was his profoundly personal painting practice, where he explored the emotive power of colour and atmosphere.
His 2018 exhibition at DC Moore Gallery, The Atmospherics of Interruption: Paintings 1966–2018, unveiled a body of work shaped by a profound sensory shift—his hearing loss, which he transformed into a visual lyricism, where brushstrokes hummed like music and faces emerged unbidden from the ether.
A scholar as much as a critic, Kozloff’s writings spanned centuries and mediums, from Cubism/Futurism (1973) to The Theatre of the Face (2007), and monographs on artists like Jasper Johns and Saul Leiter. His photographic works, collected in New York Over the Top (2013) and A Carnival of Mimics (2020), are testaments to his restless, roving eye.
Kozloff’s relentless curiosity—a mind that dissected art’s political weight while never losing sight of its intimate, human pulse. He is survived by his contributions to the way we see.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2013 New York Over the Top, Steven Kasher Gallery, New York
2011 Max Kozloff: New York Means Business 1977–1984, Higher Pictures, New York, New York
2007 The Ends Are Nigh, Higher Pictures, New York, New York
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2000 Crossed Purposes: Joyce & Max Kozloff, Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, Virginia
1999 Crossed Purposes, UCR Sweeney Art Gallery, Riverside, California
Crossed Purposes, Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, California
1994 Mexico through foreign eyes, Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan
PUBLICATIONS
2013 New York Over the Top (contrasto)
2002 New York: Capital of Photography. New York: Jewish Museum/New Haven (Yale University Press)
2000 Cultivated Impasses: Essays on the Waning of the Avant-Garde, 1964-1975 (Marsilio)
1994 Lone Visions, Crowded Frames: Essays on Photography. (University of New Mexico Press)
1991 Duane Michals: Now Becoming Then. Altadena, CA (Twin Palms Publishers)
1987 The Privileged Eye: Essays on Photography (University of New Mexico Press)
1979 Photography & fascination: Essays. Danbury, (Addison House)
1973 Cubism/Futurism. (Charterhouse)
Max Kozloff is survived by his wife, Joyce Kozloff, and son, Nikolas Kozloff.
Top Photo Courtesy School of Visual Arts New York