Biography

Aaron Shikler was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1922. He studied at the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, and at the Hans Hofmann School, New York. In addition to his landscape and figurative work, Shikler is also well known for his portraits, his commissions including official portraits for the White House of President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Mrs. John F. Kennedy, and First Lady Mrs. Ronald Reagan. Shikler was the focus of considerable attention when several of his pictures of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and her children were sold in Sotheby’s auction of her estate. Shikler’s work has been widely exhibited since the early 1950s, and is represented in numerous public collections such as The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the New Britain Museum of American Art, and the National Academy of Design, as well as many private collections. Aaron Shikler was elected in 1985 a Centennial Fellow of Temple University, in 1965 an Academician of the National Academy of Design and in 1962 an Associateof the National Academy of Design. Shikler received the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award in 1957 and the Thomas B. Clarke Prize in 1958, 1960, and 1961. In 1976, he received the State Department Traveling Grant, a Certificate of Honor at the Tyler School of Art and the Benjamin Altman Prize, National Academy of Design .