Joop Sanders

Joop Sanders (born October 6, 1921) is a Dutch-American painter, educator, and founding member of the American Abstract Expressionist group. He is the youngest member of the first generation of the New York School.

Sanders was born 1921 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and emigrated to the US in 1939. He studied in 1940 at the Art Students League of New York, in New York City, for six months with artist George Grosz.

In 1940 Sanders met Willem de Kooning at a concert featuring the music of Virgil Thomson, Aaron Copland and William Schuman. Sanders, like de Kooning is Dutch. At the concert Sanders started talking to the woman sitting next to him. When he told her his name was Joop, she remarked, "Oh, is that Dutch? You have to meet my fiance who is also Dutch." The woman was Elaine de Kooning. And by the mid-1940s, Elaine de Kooning had painted a series of approximately a dozen portraits of Joop Sanders, which seem to express aloneness and androgyny. He studied in 1948 with Willem de Kooning.

Sanders was a charter member of The Club, which was located at 39 East 8th Street. The twenty original members of The Club were, Landes Lewitin, Phillip Pavia, Willem de Kooning, Milton Resnick, Conrad Marca-Relli, Franz Kline, James Rosati, Ibram Lassaw, Al Copley, Ad Reinhardt, George Cavillon, John Roelants, Sanders, Ludwig Sander, Emanuel Navaretta, Charles Egan, Jack Tworkov, Gus Falk, Ahron Ben-Shnuel and Peter Grippe.

He exhibited in the legendary "9th Street Art Exhibition", held at 60 East 9th Street from May 21-June 10, 1951 alongside;Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, Albert Kotin. Milton Resnick, Joan Mitchell and Lee Krasner, among others.

Sanders work is held in the public museum collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, New York.

Teaching

Sanders has taught art classes at the Pratt Institute (1960–1965), Cooper Union (1961–1965), Carnegie Institute of Technology (1965–1966), the State University of New York at New Paltz (1966–1985), and the University of California, Berkeley (1968). Sanders is professor emerita in Studio Art at SUNY at New Paltz.

Select solo exhibitions

• Tanager Gallery, New York City;
• Stable Gallery, New York City;
• Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands;
• Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
• Gallery Schlesinger-Boisante, New York City;
• 1968 – Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York City;
• 1986 – Sanders abstract paintings and drawings from the 60s and 80s, Alfred Kren Gallery, New York City, New York;

Select group exhibitions

• 2015 – "Elaine de Kooning Portrayed", Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, East Hampton, New York
• 1998–1999 – "Dubuffet to de Kooning: Expressionist Prints from Europe and America", Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, New York
• 1988–1989 – "Abstractions", Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, New York

He is married to the lieder singer Isca Sanders. His son is the steel sculptor John Sanders and his daughter is the lawyer and environmental activist Karin Greenfield-Sanders. His son-in-law is the photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and his grandchildren include artist Isca Greenfield-Sanders and filmmaker Liliana Greenfield-Sanders.

He became a US citizen in 1955.