Louise Fishman paintings
At the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, NY
“Louise Fishman: A Retrospective,” which ran last spring and summer, was the first museum survey show ever of this accomplished, senior American artist. It was organized by the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York, part of the SUNY Purchase campus.
Fishman uses the visual language of Abstract Expressionism, but her work is also informed by the feminist art movement and by her Jewish heritage. Her large-scale oil paintings of the last few years, such as Serenissima (2012), above, and Crossing the Rubico (2012) on the home page, are impressively dynamic and pack an emotional punch, yet they are intimate and visually poetic. “I became very excited about the Abstract Expressionists,” said Fishman, who is 77, discussing her younger days in a recent interview, “because they were so physical, and it seemed to be such an athletic activity. I was a very serious athlete, as much as a woman could be in those days. I played four years of basketball and pitched fastball on the boys’ team. Sculpture and athleticism are part of my art history. So, the physicality of Abstract Expressionism was very profound.”
