Mitzi Melnicoff, Seated Self-Portrait

This self-portrait was probably painted shortly after Mitzi Melnicoff (born Miriam Goldman in Philadelphia) graduated from Temple University's Tyler School of Art. After working several years as an illustrator, in 1962 she began teaching drawing, painting, and illustration at the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts). (Her colleagues there included artists Jane Piper and Doris Staffel, both of whom are included in this exhibition.) In 1968 Melnicoff was awarded the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' Mary Smith Prize for a distinguished woman painter. Melnicoff first exhibited at Woodmere in 1961 when her work was included in Young Artists of Philadelphia. Shortly before she died, the Peale Galleries of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts organized an exhibition called Return To the Figure in which Melnicoff's works were hung alongside those by Romare Bearden, Sidney Goodman, Alex Katz, and Philip Pearlstein.