The career of painter Judith Rothschild (1921–1993) spanned the breadth of the twentieth century. Rothschild graduated from Wellesley College in 1943 and studied art at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Arts Students League in Manhattan. Her first solo show was held in December 1945 at Jane Street Gallery in New York City, where she was a member of the artists’ collective that included Nell Blaine, Ida Fischer, Jane Freilicher, Louisa Matthíasdóttir, and Larry Rivers. The early half of her career was characterized by colorful, Cubist abstraction influenced especially by her teachers Hans Hoffman and Karl Knaths. In the 1970s, she began incorporating new materials and techniques into her work, developing relief paintings with foam core and bright pigments in undulating, curvilinear shapes. The works in this exhibition represent her midcareer and later output, where Cubist tendencies took on Fauvist colors and Matisse-like forms. Throughout her five decades of painting, Rothschild remained true to her modernist foundations while cohesively incorporating new methods, materials, and ideas.
