This artist stayed figurative when art went abstract — he's finally recognized, at 99
Figurative painter Jonah Kinigstein was shut out of the art world when abstract expressionism came to prominence. Now he's finally getting some recognition.
In the 1950s, Jonah Kinigstein was on the verge of making it big in New York's art world. He won a Fulbright to Rome. His paintings got into the Whitney Museum's annual show of contemporary art (the precursor to the Whitney Biennial). And he was taken in by one of the biggest gallerists in the city, Edith Halpert, who had represented legends such as Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe and Ben Shahn.
Once, when magazine ran a profile of Halpert and nine of the artists she was promoting titled, Kinigstein was among them. In fact, in the main photo, he stood directly behind Halpert. But then, as a result of changing tastes in the art world, he fell into
