Harvey Dinnerstein is a figurative artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 and educator. A draftsman

Drawing

Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...

 and painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 in the realistic

Realism (visual arts)

Realism in the visual arts is a style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. The term is used in different senses in art history; it may mean the same as illusionism, the representation of subjects with visual mimesis or verisimilitude, or may mean an emphasis on the actuality of...

 tradition, his work has included genre

Genre

Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...

 paintings, contemporary narratives, complex figurative compositions, portraits, and intimate images of his family and friends.

Dinnerstein was born in Brooklyn, New York, and studied with Moses Soyer

Moses Soyer

-Biography:Soyer was born in Borisoglebsk, Russia in 1899. His father was a Hebrew scholar, writer and teacher. His family emigrated to the USA in 1912. Soyer's brothers, Raphael and Isaac were also painters...

, Yasuo Kuniyoshi

Yasuo Kuniyoshi

was an American painter, photographer and printmaker born in Okayama, Japan.He migrated to America in 1906, a year later began studying at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design. In 1935 he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship. He taught at the Art Students League of New York in New York City...

, and Julien Levi at the Art Students League of New York

Art Students League of New York

The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...

. From 1947 to 1950 Dinnerstein was also a student at the Tyler School of Art

Tyler School of Art

The Stella Elkins Tyler School of Art, usually just referred to as Tyler School of Art is Temple University's school of art, which confers BFA and MFA degrees. The school was originally founded by sculptors Stella Elkins Tyler and Boris Blai on a separate 14-acre estate in Elkins Park...

 at Temple University

Temple University

Temple University is a comprehensive public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Originally founded in 1884 by Dr. Russell Conwell, Temple University is among the nation's largest providers of professional education and prepares the largest body of professional...

 in Philadelphia. Upon his return to New York in the early 1950s, he was one of a group of recent Tyler graduates who resisted the prevailing style of Abstract Expressionism

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

 in order to paint in a figurative mode.

Inspired by the Montgomery, Alabama

Montgomery, Alabama

Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...

 bus boycott of 1956, Dinnerstein traveled south to document the Civil Rights

Civil rights

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

 upheaval through a series of drawings. This interest in cultural and moral issues continued to inform drawings and paintings that recorded the social unrest of the 1960s.

From 1965 to 1980 Dinnerstein taught at the School of Visual Arts

School of Visual Arts

The School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...

 in New York, and from 1975 to 1992 at the National Academy of Design

National Academy of Design

The National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts, founded in New York City as the National Academy of Design – known simply as the "National Academy" – is an honorary association of American artists founded in 1825 by Samuel F. B. Morse, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E...

, to which he was elected a member in 1974. He has taught at the Art Students League since 1980.

He received an Honorary Doctorate from the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts

Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts

The Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts is an art college in Old Lyme, Connecticut-History:The Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts was founded in 1976 by Elisabeth Gordon Chandler as a figurative academy for the teaching of sculpture, figure drawing, Illustration and painting dedicated to the fine arts...

 in Old Lyme, Connecticut

Connecticut

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

 in 1998.

Dinnerstein has participated in numerous exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. His work is in the permanent collections of the Butler Institute of American Art

Butler Institute of American Art

The Butler Institute of American Art, located on Wick Avenue in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, was the first museum dedicated exclusively to American art. Established by local industrialist and philanthropist Joseph G. Butler, Jr., the museum has been operating pro bono since 1919...

, the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

, the Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

, Museum of the City of New York

Museum of the City of New York

The Museum of the City of New York is an art gallery and history museum founded in 1923 to present the history of New York City, USA and its people...

, National Academy of Design, National Museum of American Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is a museum and art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1805 and is the oldest art museum and school in the United States. The academy's museum is internationally known for its collections of 19th and 20th century American paintings,...

.

He has been a very influential instructor for several generations of students at The National Academy of Design and the Art Students League, including Ephraim Rubenstein, Nomi Silverman and Gregory Frux

Gregory William Frux

Gregory William Frux is a traditional realist artist, working mainly in the landscape genre. His oil paintings document both New York’s cityscapes and wilderness locations in North and South America.- Biography :...

.

His book Harvey Dinnerstein: An Artist at Work was published in 1978 by Watson-Guptill.