Biography:

Cy Sloane was born in May 1897. His family were members of the elite New York Community, and in the style of the time, Cy was born in an elegant suite at the now demolished Buckingham Hotel in Manhattan. He grew up on Sands Point, Long Island, with neighbors including the families of JP Morgan and C. Vanderbilt.

Thanks to a French nanny, his first language was French, a language he preferred to speak and listen to thereafter. At an early age he was sent to the boarding school in Summit NJ. At 12 he finished his first painting of a landscape. He studied at Princeton and graduated with a degree in Latin and Greek. He maintained his interest in painting and left for Paris around 1921 where he studied with Amelie Ozanfant and Fernand Léger, 2 giants of industrial cubism. The mechanical design of these two artists would later inform his commercial artwork but he found the philosophy dry and without the human touch.

Upon returning to the States in the mid 1920’s, Cy accepted a job at Calkins and Holden Ad Agency, at the time the most avant-garde advertising house in New York. He attended evening classes at the Art Student League in New York City, where he began friendships with many painters including John Sloan and Philip Evergood. The philosophy of both Sloan and Evergood was that the human experience should be at the center of all works of art. Soon Cy would be in a circle of artists who would exhibit at the ACA gallery on Madison Ave. At the time the ACA gallery was notable for its stable of artists working on motifs that dealt with social and human issues. Cy’s artist friends would soon include George Picken, Robert Gwathmey, the Soyer brothers among other painters. These associations would later be helpful in acquiring teaching positions around NY.

In the 30’s Cy shared studios Philip Evergood in Patchogue, Long Island, Cape Cod and the Connecticut countryside. These were productive times. Besides painting, his crowd was actively involved with social issues. When the horror of WW2 arrived, Cy was not called up for duty due to his age. Nonetheless, he wanted to contribute to the fight against Nazism, going to Montreal to work in a munitions plant. For security reasons he was not allowed to hold a pencil no less have one.

Following the war Cy returned to New York and began teaching at prestigious art schools, often through the referral of his friends at the ACA gallery. Among them Cooper Union, the Brooklyn Museum and the John Morgan School. It was during this period that most of Cy’s oil paintings, stored in a barn in Connecticut, were sadly destroyed in a fire.

In the mid 1950’s Cy met the head of the Humanities Department at St. Mike’s Dr. Henry Fairbanks who hired him, and thus beginning his life and work at St. Mike’s. In 1978 Cy was honored with the title of Professor Emeritus. He continued his association with St. Mike’s until his death in 1989.

Walt Whitman, when speaking of Thomas Eakins, said “he never knew but one artist and that is Tom Eakins who could resist the temptation to see what they think ought to be rather than what is”. If Walt Whitman knew Cy, I believe he would say that he did in fact know of one other – and that he had never met such a gifted, generous and humble artist as Cy Sloane.

Biography written by Terry O'Brien