Celebrating Anton van Dalen (1938-2024)

SVA Theatre
333 West 23 Street, New York, NY 10011
October 5, 2-4pm
Doors open at 1pm

Immigrant, humanist, artist, activist, educator, and lifelong pigeon keeper, Anton van Dalen dedicated his life to documenting the Lower East Side’s evolution from dilapidation to gentrification in paintings, drawings and sculptures that, as the critic and poet John Yau states, “arose out of a meticulous draftsmanship in service of an idiosyncratic imagination merged with civic-mindedness.”

Born in Amstelveen, Holland in 1938 to a conservative Calvinist family during World War II, van Dalen began rearing pigeons at the age of 12, seeking solace in the companionship of a community outside the instability around him. After arriving in New York’s Lower East Side in 1966, van Dalen served as witness, storyteller, and documentarian of the dramatic cultural shifts in the neighborhood. While active in the alternative art scene in the East Village during the 1970s and 80s, van Dalen was a student and assistant to the cartoonist and illustrator Saul Steinberg in addition to teaching at art institutions such as Pratt and SVA for over 30 years.

Not only an artist, but also a public servant, van Dalen said, “There is no one interpretation—there are many. And that’s what is wonderful about art. It’s not a biased single place. You can always kind of find yourself within it.”

Van Dalen presented solo exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York, NY; University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA; Temple Gallery, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA; and EXIT Art, New York, NY, among others. His work is in the permanent collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT. His work has also been included in group exhibitions at notable institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston, MA; New Museum, New York, NY; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Artists Space, New York, NY; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada, among others. Anton: Circling Home, a documentary by Morgan Schmidt-Feng, Dennis Mohr, Katy Swailes and Will Nold, premiered in 2020 and was named DOC LA’s Best Documentary Portrait. In 2022, Black Dog Press and P·P·O·W published the first comprehensive monograph on the artist's work, Anton van Dalen: Community of Many, featuring critical essays by John Yau and Tiernan Morgan, as well as an interview with artist Krzysztof Wodiczko.

For all press inquiries, please contact Alejandro Jassan at ale@alejassan.com

P·P·O·W
392 Broadway
New York NY 10013
Tel: + 1 212 647 1044