MoMA pays tribute to the career of Susan Rothenberg
MoMA pays tribute to the career of Susan Rothenberg
Susan Rothenberg. “Triphammer Bridge, 1974
From April 15 to June 12, 2022, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York presents its first exhibition of the artist Susan Rothenberg.
Source: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) ·· Image: Susan Rothenberg. “Triphammer Bridge, 1974. Acrylic and tempera on canvas. 67 1/8″ x 9′ 7 3/8″ (170.5 x 292.1 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Edward R. Broida.
Two years after the artist’s death, the exhibition that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is dedicating to Susan Rothenberg (1945–2020) is on a small scale (a dozen works are presented, all from MoMA’s own collection), but one that allows the visitor to explore all the stages of the artist’s career.
Susan Rothenberg is best known for her large, simple, monochromatic images of horses created early in her career. As the museum explains in a press release, “in the early 1970s, Susan Rothenberg (1945–2020) began painting ambitious, critically acclaimed images of horses, such as ‘Triphammer Bridge’ (1974) and ‘Black in Place’ (1976), which are both included in this installation. Deploying what would become a signature palette dominated by dirty whites and muted reds, Rothenberg bisected, isolated, and flattened her equine subjects, breaking past representational painting conventions of shadow and composition.”
“By the early 1980s, Rothenberg moved from the horse to the human body, rendering forms in motion or in fragments. Emblematic of this shift in subject matter is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (1988), a major commission of six paintings that she created for the PaineWebber Group’s 38th-floor corporate dining room in Manhattan”. The press release goes on to explain that in the following decade Rothenberg moved to the New Mexico desert, choosing as subject matter for his paintings objects and experiences from his immediate surroundings. This led to an inevitable comparison with the artist Georgia O’Keeffe, a comparison Rothenberg considered misguided. #2022 #MoMANewYork #theartwolf
