Nicolai Cikovsky

Nicolai Stepanovich Cikovsky (December 10, 1894 – May 6, 1985) was an American painter. His work is held at the Whitney, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.^[1] He also had three New Deal-era Treasury Section of Fine Arts commissions for public buildings: two murals at Maryland post offices and a set of the murals at the Interior Building in Washington, D.C.^[2]

Nicolai Cikovsky
Desert, Department of Interior Building, Washington, D.C.
Born	Николай Степанович Циковский (1894-12-10)December 10, 1894 Pinsk, Russian Empire (modern Belarus)
Died	May 6, 1985(1985-05-06) (aged 90) New York

Born "near the Polish border," Cikovsky emigrated from Pinsk to the United States in 1923.^[3] He published a number of pieces in proletarian (Communist) journals like New Masses and International Literature in the 1930s. He was a member of the John Reed Club and showed landscapes at the Whitney.^[4] Cikovsky was a resident at Yaddo in 1931.^[5] Cikovsky was one of the Soviet émigré painters who formed the Hampton Bays Art Group.^[6][7] Other members of the group were David Burliuk, Arshile Gorky, Moses Soyer, Raphael Soyer, John D. Graham, George Constant, and Milton Avery.^[6] Originally producing slightly abstracted images, by the late 1940s Cikovsky had moved toward naturalism.^[8] Cikovsky died in Washington, D.C. at age 90.^[9]

Nicolai Cikovsky Jr. (1933–2016) was a noted art historian and curator at the National Gallery of Art.^[10]