b. New York, NY, 1939

Jane Kogan works with a variety of mediums and in many styles, returning often to the female figure as a site of interest. Her Amazon series from the 1960s and 1970s is a unique body of work which investigates the feminism of the period and Kogan’s own identity within the singular format of larger-than-life vertical canvases that are rich with symmetry and symbolism. A work belonging to this group, Kogan’s Interiorized Self Portrait, was critically reviewed by Linda Nochlin, April Kingsley, and Rosalyn Drexler as part of the group exhibition Women Choose Women at the New York Cultural Center in 1973. 

Kogan’s approach is ever evolving. As a student at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center in the late 1960s, she studied with Leo Manso and made paintings inspired by Paul Cezanne and engaging with color and flattened perspective. She later produced a series of realist paintings depicting street scenes in Provincetown, and for a period in the 1990s, she worked exclusively with colored pencil, attaching mixed media objects like buttons and coins to works on paper. Her oeuvre includes textured etchings and a series of photo collages titled Embedded, in which images of her own nude body are “embedded” into public scenes in the town.  

Kogan graduated Magna Cum Laude from Brandeis in 1960 before studying in Rome from 1961-62 under a Fulbright Fellowship. She studied etching with Harry Stenberg at the Art Students League and completed graduate school at Columbia University. She has participated in group shows at Palazzo Venezia, Rome (1962); Brooklyn Museum (1966); the International Miniature Print Show at Pratt Graphic Center (1966 and 1968); and Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY. She has been the subject of solo shows at the Chrysler Museum (1970), the Fine Arts Work Center (1978 and 1982) and multiple galleries in Provincetown. Her work is also held in numerous public and private collections, including The Art Students League, Hunt Botanical Library, Carnegie Mellon Institute, Museum of Modern Art Loan Collection, among others.