Emily Genauer, 91; Art Critic Awarded Pulitzer Prize in 1974

Emily Genauer, 91, a Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic who familiarized newspaper readers with modern artists including Marc Chagall and Diego Rivera, died Friday in New York after a long illness.

Born on Staten Island, N.Y., Genauer was educated at Hunter College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

She began her newspaper career with the New York World in 1929 and remained for 20 years with what became the World-Telegram. Genauer left abruptly in 1949 when the newspaper’s owner, Roy W. Howard, criticized her praise of artists he considered “Communists and left-wingers.”

Intent on promoting lesser-known and 20th-century artists, Genauer was chief art critic for the New York Herald Tribune from 1949 to 1966. After the Tribune merged with two papers to become the New York World Journal Tribune, she stayed until its end in 1967.

Genauer capped her long career with a final decade as a columnist for the Newsday Syndicate. In 1974, she earned the Pulitzer Prize for criticism for her work on art and artists for the syndicate.