Susan Rothenberg: Movement, Mutation, and the Human Form

Susan Rothenberg1945– | AMERICAN | OILS; ACRYLICS; PRINTS; DRAWINGS

Rothenberg is a former dancer who came to prominence as a painter in the mid-1970s, whose work is now much displayed. Her large-scale works usually contain a human or animal form emerging from a hazy background on the point of mutating into something else. Her work is weird, vaguely disturbing, and symptomatic of the American love of anxious self-analysis.

Susan Rothenberg

Black Blocks, 1977, Acrylic on canvas, 139.7 x 202.6 cm / 55 x 79 3/4 in

Susan Rothenberg

Galisteo Creek, 1992, Oil on canvas, 283.8 × 375 cm / 111 3/4 × 147 5/8 in, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1992 (1992.343)

KEY WORKS: Parsifal, 1973 (London: Tate Collection);Margaret, 1981 (New York: Marion Goodman Gallery);Span, 1981 (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art);Interior, 1981 (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum)

Rothenberg explored themes based on her dancing, the activity and investigation as akin to painting a self-portrait.