Philip Pearlstein Wife: Meet Dorothy Pearlstein

Dorothy Pearlstein was the wife of Philip Pearlstein, an American painter best known for Modernist Realism nudes.

Philip Pearlstein married Dorothy Cantor in 1950, and Andy Warhol was at the wedding party.

The Pearlstein’s relocated to East 4th Street, taking over an apartment from fellow figure painter Lester Johnson, and Philip enrolled in the Masters in Art History programme at New York University Institute of Fine Arts.

His thesis was on artist Francis Picabia, evaluating Cubism, Abstract art, Dada, and Surrealism, and he graduated in 1955.

Philip Pearlstein died Saturday, December 17, 2022, morning in Manhattan. He was 98. The death was confirmed by Betty Cuningham of the Betty Cuningham Gallery in New York. No cause was given.

His artistic career took off in the mid-1950s when he painted a series of rocks and trees that he had sketched one summer in Maine.

He taught at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, from 1959 to 1963, and then spent a year as a Visiting Critic at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Finally, he was Professor, and then Distinguished Professor Emeritus, at Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, New York, from 1963 to 1988.