Martha Kantor (1896–1981) was an American glass painter. She was a member of the art colony in New City, New York, and "recognized as a master" of painting on glass."[1]
Early life
Kantor was born as Martha Ryther in 1896 in Boston, Massachusetts.[1][2] Her mother, Martha Dickinson, was a painter and Kantor took painting lessons from Maurice Prendergast at a young age.[2] She subsequently studied under Hugo Robus and William Zorach at the Modern Art School in New York City.[1]
Career
Kantor joined an art colony in New City, New York co-founded by her former teacher Hugo Robus and another artist, Henry Varnum Poor in 1918.[3] By the 1930s, she took up painting on glass, an old method of folk art.[2] She painted Cape Cod houses and still lifes.[2] Her work was exhibited at the Zabriskie Gallery in New York City. According to The New York Times, she became "recognized as a master of the medium."[1]
Kantor was the founder of the Rockland Foundation, later known as the Rockland Center for the Arts in West Nyack, New York.[2]
Kantor died of cancer on January 10, 1981 in New City, New York, aged 84.[1] She was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Rockland Center for the Arts in November 1981.[2] One of her paintings, Reading In Bed, is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.[4] The Art Institute of Chicago holds a screen-printed silk work by her.[5]
