Cora Cohen was an artist whose paintings, drawings, photographs, and altered x-rays engage with American and European traditions of abstraction. Her works are exhibited extensively in the United States and Germany. In a 2022 review of a show called Cora Cohen: Works from the 1980s at Morgan Presents in New York, Artforum’s Barry Schwabsky wrote that "Cohen’s determination to evade stylistic consistency has made her one of the most underrated painters in New York.” 

A solo exhibition of Cohen’s drawings, Bridge Freezes Before the Road, May 31 – July 10, 2016, curated by Karen Wilkin, was held at the gallery of The New York Studio School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture in New York City. Her first major solo exhibition in 1974, curated by James Harithas, held was at the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York.

Cohen was the recipient of a 2013 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship Award. Her previous honors include grants from the NEA (1987), the New York Foundation for the Arts (1989), the Gottlieb Foundation (1990, 2006), The Pollock/Krasner Foundation Award (1998), a Yaddo Residency (1982), The Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Space Program Residency (2008-2009), and The Edward F. Albee Foundation Residency (2009).

Cohen’s works have been written about extensively in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, ARTnews, Flash Art,The New Yorker, Time Out New York, New York Magazine, ArtNet Magazine, openpr.de, and on artcritical.com. Her work is included in the permanent collections of many institutions: the Swedish State Arts Council, Stockholm; The Ulla and Heiner Pietzsch Collection, Berlin; the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro; The William and Uytendale Scott Memorial Study Collection of Works by Women of the Bryn Mawr College Art and Archaeology Collection, Bryn Mawr; Yale University, New Haven; and the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase.

Born in Manhattan in 1943, Cora Cohen studied with Paul Feeley, Lawrence Alloway, and Richard Haas at Bennington College (BA degree 1964, MA degree 1972). She has been invited to participate in symposia and to lecture at various institutions including the New York Studio School (2006); University of the Arts, Philadelphia (2007); Maryland Institute College of Art (2010-2012); the Columbia University School of the Arts (2011); the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2011, 2012); Medicine Hat College, Alberta (2012); and Bennington College (2013). Her current studio is in Long Island City, New York.

Photograph © Paula Gillen