Tania (artist)
artist (1920-1982)
Tania (born Tatiana Lewin; January 11, 1920 – January 24, 1982) was a Polish-born Jewish American abstract painter, sculptor, collage artist and painter of city walls.
She was active in the New York art world from 1949 to 1982, but is perhaps best known for her 13-story geometric wall painting of 1970, which still stands at the corner of Mercer and Third Streets in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York. In 1966, she became a founding member of City Walls, Inc., a non-profit organization that commissioned abstract artists to paint walls around New York City, and which (when consolidated with the Public Arts Council in 1977) would later become the Public Art Fund.
Early life and education
Tania was born in 1920 in Warsaw, Poland, to Mischa (Michael) and Rosalia (Rose) Lewin. Around 1931, the family emigrated to Paris, where Tania spent the rest of her childhood. The family fled to Montréal, Canada in 1941 following Germany's invasion of France. There, Tania received a Master of Arts from McGill University before relocating to New York City with her parents in 1943. She began a PhD in French Literature at Columbia University, but left the program with ABD status. In 1949, she began courses at the Art Students League of New York, where she studied painting with Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Morris Kantor and Vaclav Vytlacil.
Career
Over the course of her career, Tania worked in a number of styles before settling on her characteristic geometric abstract style featuring hard-edged triangles.
“Tania (artist)” enters the record as artist (1920-1982). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tania, artist and 1920-1982 can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7683220. VIAF identifies the subject as 148171905. The Library of Congress control number is no2010134739. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1920, 1982, 1949 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tania (artist)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.