George Nick 1927 - 2025
Renowned Artist and Teacher
By: NAGA - Sep 18, 2025
George Nick, of Concord MA, died peacefully on September 9, 2025, spending his final days at home, surrounded by loving family.
Born in Rochester, New York, on March 28, 1927, he was the son of Leon and Anna Nick.
As a child, he worked in the Kodak Factory and as an assistant to his father, a carpenter, all while pursuing his elementary, middle, and high school studies. After he graduated from Monroe High School in Rochester, NY, in 1946, he was drafted into the US Army, and he served as an Instructor and Information Specialist on Ascom Base, Korea. It was in this capacity as an educator to the troops and local Koreans that he decided he would pursue art and education as his career.
In 1948 he enrolled at the Cleveland Institute of Art, and in 1951, he moved to New York City. In New York, he studied under the artist Edwin Dickinson at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, then later at the Arts Students League. He cited Edwin Dickinson as his mentor, admiring Dickinson’s painterly restraint, his sensitivity, and the way he taught teaching through seeing and doing. For his whole life, he invoked Dickinson as his most important influence.
He used to say that he started painting simply because he was interested in the world, and it seemed to him that painting could be a way that he could learn about it. He obtained advanced degrees (BFA and MFA) from Yale University, where he became acquainted with some of the artists who would be his closest friends: Fairfield Porter, Neil Welliver, and Philip Pearlstein. By 1964, during a time when it was decidedly unfashionable, he was establishing himself as a realist artist (he would go on to argue that realism would never come into fashion again). He was likewise establishing himself in his career as a sought-after and well-liked, “straight-shooting” teacher of painting. He spoke in “Nickspeak,” a term coined by some students for his language and method of teaching- plainspoken, unvarnished honesty that encouraged students to take risks, fail, and try again. While many students went to him hoping to learn how to paint “like George,” his only goal was to help them paint like themselves. That and “to learn how to make art-- that is, the representation of three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface.” He taught for 25 years at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and his retirement party was a massive, school-wide event. When he took to the floor to speak, with his characteristically wicked sense of humor, he took a long slow look around the room and said “I’m looking to see who ISN’T here!!”
Based in Massachusetts for the majority of his painting career, his work was shown broadly, primarily in Boston, at Gallery NAGA, in New York at the Tibor de Nagy and Fischbach Galleries, and the Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago. His works are held in collection at major public institutions such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Hirshorn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the ICA Boston, the Danforth Museum in Boston, and in a multitude of private collections.
In addition to his constant desire to learn, he was grateful, humble, and incredibly resourceful. Even as the physical realities of the last few years of his life began to take their toll on him, his spirit remained unchanged. Through sheer willpower and determination, he painted right up until the day before he died, up against a myriad of very real and powerful physical challenges.
His love of life, art, learning, family, and the many incredible paintings he made will be his legacy for his family to preserve and carry on.
He leaves behind a wife, Assya Nick (Concord, MA), a daughter, Katya Nick Sternberg (New York, NY), son-in-law, Zach Sternberg (New York, NY), and three grandchildren.
Private burial services with U.S. Military honors were held on September 14, 2025 at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, MA. A celebration of George’s life will be held on Saturday, September 27, at 11am, at his studio, 86 Philip Farm Road, Concord, MA.
In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made in his name to the New York Studio School, https://nyss.org.
Arrangements are entrusted to Dee Funeral Home & Cremation Service of Concord.