DAN POLLOCK

POLLOCK--Dan, 74, passed away June 12, 2024, at his home in New York City. His father, economist Raphael Pollock, fled his native Vienna for the United States in the mid-1930s and married Sylvia Fried. Dan, their only child, was born in 1950 and grew up in Washington, DC. Dan briefly attended film school at NYU and continued to live in New York, with sojourns on the East End of Long Island, for the rest of his life. With little capital or relevant experience but an acute eye and aesthetic sense, he co-founded Van Allen Inc. (originally Van Allen Belt Co.), which was in the vanguard of the 1970s revival of Art Deco design and grew into a leading manufacturer of fashion jewelry, with Dan as its creative inspiration and visionary. In 1984, he married prominent ceramicist Lidya Buzio, who predeceased him in 2014. In 1993, he co-founded the Cecilia de Torres Gallery in Soho, which specializes in Latin American Constructivism and Geometric Abstraction and, in particular, the works of pioneering modernist Joaquin Torres-Garcia and his school. Dan did not have a standard-issue liberal arts degree, but he was enormously well-read and intellectually sophisticated. He was devoted to the Sunday New York Times crossword and the Yankees (less so, the Mets). He loved classic European and American cinema, and was an ardent Marxist (Groucho and his brothers, that is). A friend with a question about a film could usually get a faster (and more accurate) answer by calling Dan than checking a database. He delighted in taking his friends to the opera, where he was an (amateur) critic for 50 years. He enjoyed sharing a nice Malbec, Chateauneuf, or fine champagne. He was exceptionally generous in word and deed when someone needed help. He leaves behind many whose lives he touched, including his beloved partner, artist Marta Chilindron; his dear friend and colleague, Cecilia de Torres; lifelong pal Jim Feldman; longtime friend Stan Satlin; cousin Robin Radin; and nieces Rachel and Athena Perry.