Cornelia Foss

Cornelia Foss was born in Berlin, Germany in 1931. Her first six years were spent in Rome, Italy. Next, she attended school in Berlin for two years, and then came with her family to America in 1939. She has lived primarily in America since then, and is a resident of New York City and Bridgehampton, Long Island.

During her formative years she studied with Stephen Greene before moving to Los Angeles to continue her studies with Rico Lebrun and Howard Warshaw, two of the leading artists in Southern California at the time.  She also studied at the University of Rome, Italy. Foss has taught at the National Academy of Design and at the Art Students League of New York. She is Instructor Emerita at the latter.

In 2009, Foss was elected a member of the National Academy of Design. 2013 marked the publication of her book, Cornelia Foss: Ten Years of Paintings and Drawings, 2003-2013. In 2015, Skira-Rizzoli published Cornelia Foss: A Retrospective.

Foss had her first solo shows at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1959 and 1961, followed by solo shows at the James Goodman Gallery in Buffalo; the Berry-Hill Gallery, New York, NY; The Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.; Boston University; The Huntington Museum, Long Island, NY; The Clark Gallery, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Saint-Gaudens Museum, Cornish, NH; Glenn Horowitz Gallery, East Hampton, NY; The Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum, Marquette University, Milwaukee,WI; The DFN Gallery, New York, NY; The Gerald Peters Gallery, New York, NY – among others. Her latest exhibit was a retrospective in 2015 at the Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York.

Her work is in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; The Houston Museum of Art, Houston, TX; The Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York; The Brooklyn Museum; The Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, KS; The Museum of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, OK; The Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY; The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; and The Huntington Museum, Long Island, NY, among other museums.