SAUL BOLASNI
IN MY HAND
Curated by Judy Giera
The curator will be present for the opening reception.
March 28 – May 2, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 28, 3–5 PM
Daniel Cooney Fine Art is thrilled to present In My Hand—a revelatory exhibition of approximately twenty drawings by the legendary illustrator Saul Bolasni, spanning a remarkable three decades of work from the 1940s through the 1970s. Organized by Judy Giera, Associate Director of Collections at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, the exhibition draws from the museum’s extraordinary holding of over 100 Bolasni works—offering a rare, intimate encounter with an artist whose eye was as singular as his life.
Born in Cleveland in 1916, Saul Bolasni came of age in a city crackling with industrial energy—a Near West Side neighborhood shaped by waves of immigrant families and the Great Migration. His queerness was a secret he kept carefully, but like his talent, it was impossible to fully contain. At his mother’s urging, he made his way to New York City in 1936, where he found unlikely guardians in a circle of lesbian women who introduced him to the city’s underground gay world—and where his art found its audience.
New York delivered swiftly: Bolasni soon received his first commission from The New Yorker—the coveted Easter Issue cover—followed by work for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. His draftsmanship was impeccable; his career, luminous. But it was abroad that something deeper emerged in his work.
In 1949, Bolasni traveled to Paris at the invitation of his childhood friend and fellow artist David Hill—and walked into a world transformed. Among an openly gay creative community, he drew freely, joyfully, with a newly liberated hand. The lush plein air drawings in this exhibition—Parisian parks shimmering with light, monuments caught in a spontaneous line—were made in this atmosphere of freedom. That same year he ventured to the island of Elba off the Tuscan coast, where his line grew looser still, playfully chasing light across the Mediterranean landscape.
Paris remained a touchstone. The exhibition’s portraits—created between 1956 and 1959—place their sitters in richly layered environments suffused with the atmosphere of postwar France. Among them are three tender likenesses of David Hill, a quiet testament to a lifelong friendship. Alongside these European works, the exhibition presents drawings made in New York City, the adopted home Bolasni loved fiercely until his death in 2012 at the age of ninety-six.
Bolasni’s work appeared across countless publications throughout his career. His drawings are held in the permanent collections of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, the National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of the City of New York, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. In My Hand is a rare chance to see this body of work gathered and alive—and to hold, however briefly, what Bolasni held in his: the whole charged world, rendered in line.
Daniel Cooney Fine Art | dan@danielcooneyfineart.com | 505-416-5452
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