Myril Adler
Vitebsk, Russia | Briarcliff Manor, NY — 1920–2015
Myril Adler arrived in the United States at age three, having been born in Vitebsk — the same Russian city that produced Marc Chagall. She spent the next eighty-plus years making art with an intensity that never let up. Printmaker, collagraphist, painter, collagist: she didn't settle into one medium because one was never enough.
Selected Works
Myril Adler grouping of prints c.1960s
Myril Adler "Flare" c.1960s Intaglio etching collage, ink on paper 4.75" x 2.75"
Myril Adler "Hierophany" c.1960s Collagraph ink on paper 2" x 2"
Myril Adler grouping of prints c.1960s
Myril Adler "Equatorial Curtain" c.1960s Intaglio etching collage, ink on paper 5.75" x 2.5"
Myril Adler grouping of prints c.1960s
Myril Adler Untitled c.1960s Intaglio etching collage, ink on paper 3" x 6"
Myril Adler "Knight" c.1960s Collagraph ink on paper 2" x 5"
Myril Adler grouping of prints c.1960s
Myril Adler grouping of prints c.1960s
Myril Adler "Reconstruction" c.1960s Collagraph ink on paper 2.25" x 2.25"
Myril Adler grouping of prints c.1960s
Myril Adler "Duo" c.1960s Collagraph ink on paper 2" x 2.5"
A framed abstract artwork featuring a dark sky with a pink and orange streak, and dark blue and green hills at the bottom.
Myril Adler "Crusade" c.1960s Intaglio etching ink on paper 2" x 2"
Myril Adler grouping of prints c.1960s
Myril Adler Untitled c.1960s Intaglio etching collage, ink on paper 3.75" x 1.75"
"Myril experimented with unconventional collage materials — tarlatan, hardware store metals, her own torn etchings — and assembled them into something entirely new."
— From the family archive
About the work
Myril Adler getting help to move the large, heavy roller in her studio.
Her collagraphs are especially distinctive. She inked textured hardware-store metals in two passes — yellow first, then red on the raised surfaces — to create layered, almost painterly grounds. She used tarlatan, a stiff open-weave cotton normally reserved for wiping ink from plates, as collage material. She tore apart her own finished etchings and reassembled them into new configurations, then painted over the surface with acrylic. Nothing was precious. Everything was available. From 1982 to 1986, while artist-in-residence at Pratt Graphics Center, she turned that same restlessness toward faces — sketching the homeless men and women she encountered daily on the streets of Manhattan. That body of work grew to over 250 monotype portraits, large, unflinching, and deeply compassionate. When asked why she kept going back, she answered without hesitating: "You're never too old to be angry."
Myril showed from Paris to the Hudson River Museum, from the Katonah Gallery to the Javits Convention Center. Her first solo show was in 1944, at the University of Colorado. Her last major exhibition was in 2016, in Ossining, New York. That's 72 years of showing work — a record almost no artist can match. Teaching was never something separate from that — for Myril, it was just another way of making. She ran the Myril Adler Arts Workshop in Briarcliff Manor for nearly five decades, and the students she shaped went on to careers across art, design, and education.
Myril Adler was born in 1920 in Vitebsk, Russia — the same city that gave the world Marc Chagall — and arrived in the United States at age three. She was already an artist by the time she hit her teens, fighting to stay in high school an extra year just to keep making work and winning awards. That early stubbornness never left her.
What followed was a career of remarkable formal restlessness. She studied with Robert Brackman at the Art Students League, trained in printmaking at Pratt Graphics Center under Michael Ponce de Leon and Seong Moy, and worked across etching, collagraph, collage, and painting over more than eight decades. Each medium was an experiment, and each experiment broke a rule.
Exhibitions, Press & Recognition
selected solo shows
2016 Ossining Arts Council Gallery — Reverberations 2, 80-Year Memorial Retrospective 2000 AVA Fine Arts, White Plains — Faces of New York 1999 Articoli Fine Arts, White Plains 1996 Ossining Arts Council Gallery — Reverberations, 60-Year Retrospective 1994 Katonah Gallery, Katonah, NY 1991 Fine Arts Gallery, Westchester Community College (SUNY) 1986 Art Expo, Javits Convention Center, New York 1980 Katonah Gallery — Paperworks 1976 Hudson River Museum, Yonkers / Westbroadway Gallery, SoHo 1974 Westbroadway Gallery, SoHo 1972 Katonah Gallery 1970 Hudson River Museum, Yonkers 1964 Royal Athena II Gallery, New York 1952 Casa Municipale, Merano, Italy 1950 Galerie Bernheim Jeune, Paris, France 1944 Museum Gallery, University of Colorado, Boulderselected group Exhibitions
The Roundtower, Copenhagen · Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw · Jewish Museum, New York · Museum of Modern Art, Caracas, Venezuela · Lever House, New York · Hudson River Museum · National Association of Women Artists Annuals (since 1961) · Audubon Society Annual Exhibitions, National Academy · Albany Print Club Juried Annual · U.S. Information Service travelling exhibitions throughout Europe and North Africapublic collections
New York Public Library · Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY · Museum of Modern Art, Caracas, Venezuela · University of California, Berkeley · University of Rhode Island · The New Jewish Home, Mamaroneck, NYeducation
Art Students League, New York — studied with Robert Brackman
Brooklyn Museum Art School
Pratt Graphics Center — studied with Michael Ponce de Leon and Seong Moy
Theater Arts Workshop, 92nd Street Y, New Yorkpress
The New York Times · Gannett Westchester Newspapers · The Patent Trader
The Complete Printmaker (The Free Press/Macmillan, 1990) · Collage, Montage, Assemblage (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1972) · The Reinhold Book of Art Ideas (1977)recognition
Listed in Who's Who in American Art (multiple decades) · Who's Who of American Women · Who's Who of Women in the World · Who's Who in the East
Purchase Award, Museum of Modern Art, Caracas · Purchase Award, Hudson River Museum · Hortense Ferne Memorial Award, National Association of Women Artists, 1989 · School Art League Scholarship (age 12) · Tuition scholarship, Art Students League, granted by Robert BrackmanMyril made work for over seventy years and never stayed in one lane — prints, paintings, collage, mixed media. A selection of her pieces is available now. If you'd like to learn more about her work or inquire about availability, reach out directly.
Availability
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