Married to abstract painter Ilya Bolotowsky in 1933, Esphyr Slobidkina was a textile designer of clearly defined stylized forms, illustrator, and painter in abstract style. She also created abstract collages, wrote and illustrated books, and was a WPA (Works Progress Administration) artist.

She came to the United States at the age of twenty from Russia. She was a founding member of the American Abstract Artist Group, which included Josef Albers, Ad Reinhardt, Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollack.

Slobodkina also enjoyed a career as a children's book author and illustrator. Her most famous book was the classic Caps For Sale published in 1938.

Source:
Art in America, October, 2002
Peter Falk, Who Was Who in American Art

Esphyr Slobodkina was born in Siberia in 1908. In the wake of the Russian Revolution, her family fled to Vladivostok before settling in Harbin, Manchuria. In 1928 Slobodkina immigrated to New York City. She enrolled in the National Academy of Design the following year primarily to meet the requirements of her student visa. It was through a fellow student at the Academy that Slobodkina met her future husband Ilya Bolotowsky. A progressive thinker who had yet to experiment with abstraction in his own painting, Bolotowsky introduced Slobodkina to modern theories of art, particularly in relation to form, color and composition. Associations with Balcomb and Gertrude Greene, Byron Browne and Giorgio Cavallon further exposed Slobodkina to the ideas of these pioneer abstract artists and sparked a personal interest in the movement.

An invitation to the Yaddo artist colony brought Slobodkina and Bolotowsky to Saratoga Springs, New York in the early 1930s. It was during this visit that Slobodkina began tentative experimentation with abstraction, leading to her first Cubist-inspired work in 1934. Around this time Slobodkina's family moved to New York City, which temporarily sidelined her artistic progression as she was under great financial pressure to help support them. Alongside her mother, Slobodkina opened a dress shop, where she both designed and made the clothing. She also worked at a number of textile design firms throughout these years.

In 1935 Slobodkina separated from Ilya Bolotowsky and joined the Works Progress Administration. She also became very active in the Artists' Union, designing posters for them in paper collage. It was through the collage medium that she was able to develop her abstract style. By 1936 she had fully embraced abstraction as a means of artistic expression and her paintings reflected her interest in collage with their flat, layered forms and carefully constructed arrangements. In the mid-1930s Slobodkina created several Surrealist-inspired sculptures made of wood, wire, and found objects, in addition to her paintings. In 1937 she became a founding member of the American Abstract Artists and went on to be the group's president in later years.

Upon meeting Margaret Wise Brown, the children's books author, in 1937, Slobodkina was inspired to try her hand at book illustration. She provided the illustrations for Brown's The Little Fireman before writing and illustrating her own books, most notably Caps for Sale, published in 1938. In the early 1940s Slobodkina found a patron in A. E. Gallatin who purchased two of her works for his Museum of Living Art. Slobodkina was asked to participate in the important exhibition Eight by Eight: Abstract Painting Since 1940 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1945 which also featured Charles Green Shaw, George L.K. Morris, A.E. Gallatin, Suzy Frelinghuysen, Ilya Bolotowsky, Alice Trumbull Mason, and Ad Reinhardt. She was a regular exhibitor in the Whitney Museum of American Art's annuals through the 1950s. In 1957 Slobodkina was invited back to Yaddo, and in 1958 she took her first of two trips to the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.

Slobodkina's successes as an artist continued until her death in 2002.

As a child Esphyr Slobodkina and her family fled Russia to settle in Manchuria. In 1928 Slobodkina immigrated to New York and, because she had been granted a student visa, she enrolled at the National Academy of Design. Although she had done this more out of the need to fulfill the terms of her visa than any desire to develop as an artist, she soon grew interested in art, and remained at the school until 1933. While she was a student there Slobodkina became acquainted with the artists Byron Browne and Gertrude and Balcomb Greene. She also met the artist Ilya Bolotowsky, whom she married in 1933.

With Bolotowsky, Slobodkina was invited to Yaddo, the artist's colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. The experience was important to her development as an artist, as she began to move definitively toward an abstract style. Familial and financial pressures exerted themselves when her family emigrated to New York, and Slobodkina was forced to help support them. She and her mother opened a dress shop in which they created their own designs. Later, Slobodkina worked for several textile designing firms. In 1936 she began to participate in Works Progress Administration projects. During these years Slobodkina became very active in the Artist's Union. Her talent for working in collage was recognized when she created posters for the group using cut paper. In addition, she experimented with three dimensional assemblages. Her style matured, and she found patronage, most notably from Albert E. Gallatin. In 1945 she was invited to participate in the Eight by Eight exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Slobodkina was an early member of the American Abstract Artists, and she remained active in the group through the 1960s, serving as an officer on several occasions. Lively and energetic, her most significant contribution may have come in the 1940s when she served as hospitality chairman. With Alice Trumbull Mason, Slobodkina organized a series of cultural evenings in which she invited elite, socially prominent New Yorkers. In this role she introduced abstract art to an influential group, fostering a wider acceptance of modernism.

In 1937 Slobodkina met the children's author Margaret Wise Brown. Slobodkina wrote and illustrated a story with collage to present to Brown. This began a new career for Slobodkina, who illustrated many children's stories while still continuing her work as an abstract artist.