The Jewish Encyclopedia
of Western Pennsylvania
A project of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center
Esther Phillips (1902-1983) immigrated to the United States as a child in the early 20th century and initially settled in the Hill District. She attended the Neighborhood Art School at the Irene Kaufmann Settlement House, studying under Samuel Rosenberg. The family was able to relocate to the East End in the 1920s. Phillips enrolled as a part-time at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1919 and worked her way through college.
Between the late 1920s and her departure for New York in 1936, Phillips was a vibrant and often misunderstood presence in the local art world. She exhibited regularly with the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh. She participated in an exhibit of female artists at the Grant Building 1932, and she had a one-person show at the Warner Theatre in 1933 as well as other various group exhibitions around the city throughout the early 1930s.
“The public probably disagrees more violently over the work of Miss Phillips than any other local artist—unless it be John Kane,” Douglas Naylor wrote in the Pittsburgh Press in 1933. “And one never hears words of politely reserved praise for Miss Phillips. You will either say it is perfectly terrible, or that some day she will be called a genius.”