Abe Blashko, born 1920
Abe Blashko grew up in Seattle and had an early proclivity for drawing. He dropped out of school to pursue art full time and, in 1938, became the youngest artist ever to have a solo exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. Blashko’s drawings and prints from the late 1930′s and 1940′s capture the gritty edge of street life during the Great Depression in Seattle and New York City. According to Kenneth Callahan, SAM curator for Blashko’s first exhibit, “his drawings have the stamp of complete statements, with beautifully integrated conception, subject and style.”
Since 1943, Blashko has lived in the East Village in New York City, where he has supported himself as a teacher, freelance illustrator, political cartoonist and photographer. In 1995, Blashko published Saint Mark’s Place, a book of sketches of the East Village,