Paul Bodin was an American abstract painter heavily associated with the influential New York School art movement. Born in New York City, Bodin began his formal training at the National Academy of Design before transferring to the Art Students League of New York in 1928, where he briefly studied under the prominent illustrator and painter Boardman Robinson. During the Great Depression, he found employment with the easel painting division of the WPA Federal Art Project. His early work during this period was primarily representational, consisting of self-portraits, depictions of family members, and detailed scenes of New York tenement interiors, which culminated in his first solo exhibition in 1936.
Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, Bodin was an active member of a tight-knit circle of vanguard artists that included Milton Avery, Mark Rothko, and Adolph Gottlieb. This group split their time working in New York City and the coastal artist colonies of Gloucester and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Prompted by his creative proximity to these early color field painters and his close friendship with Gottlieb, Bodin began gravitating away from realism. He produced his first abstract paintings in 1945, and by the late 1940s, he had discovered a mature style defined by vibrant geometric shapes, complex color fields, and abstract forms.
From the mid-1940s through the early 1960s, Bodin became a regular fixture in the Manhattan gallery scene. His career highlights included solo exhibitions at the prestigious Betty Parsons Gallery in 1959 and 1961, as well as showcases at the Laurel Gallery and the New Gallery. His work was also featured in major institutional exhibitions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 1952 Watercolor Exhibition, the Yale Art Gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art's lending collections. He earned significant recognition during this peak period, receiving a Special Distinction Award in 1958 and the Longview Foundation Award in 1959 at the Art: USA exhibitions. Bodin stepped back from regular public exhibitions in the early 1960s and passed away from cancer at his home in Manhattan in 1994 at the age of 83. Today, his personal records, sketches, and correspondence are preserved in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.