Discipline: Visual Art

Sidney Chafetz

Discipline: Visual Art
Region: Columbus, OH
MacDowell Fellowships: 1979
Sidney “Sid” Chafetz (1922–2013) was a printmaker who created etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts. A native of Providence, he enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1940 and was drafted into the U.S. Army two years later. After serving in the war, Chafetz returned to the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 1947. He then went back to Europe and continued his professional training at L’Ecole Americaine des Beaux-Arts in Fontainebleau, France; the Acadãmie Julian in Paris; and with artists Fernand Lãger and Stanley W. Hayter. Chafetz taught at The Ohio State University from 1948–1982 and was instrumental in establishing and nurturing the printmaking program in the Department of Art. Chafetz remained active as a working and exhibiting artist throughout his life. His honors and awards included two Fulbright Fellowships, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and a Ford Foundation grant. Public and private collections, and museums such as the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, the Morgan Library, the New York Public Library, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Columbus Museum of Art, are major repositories of his work.

Studios

Putnam

Sidney Chafetz worked in the Putnam studio.

The Graphics Studio (as it was originally named) was converted to its present use in 1972–1974 through a grant from the Putnam Foundation, and originally served the property as both a power house and pump house. Well water was pumped from a large cistern to Hillcrest, the Foreman’s Cottage, and the lower buildings closer to…

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