Judith Rothschild (1921-1993) was an American abstract artist known for her dynamic compositions of geometric shapes and vibrant colors. Born in New York City, she graduated from Wellesley College before studying at the Arts Students League with Reginald Marsh, at William Stanley Hayter’s Atelier 17, and with Hans Hofmann and Karl Knaths.
Rothschild's artistic journey was marked by experimentation and evolution. In the 1940s, she was associated with the Jane Street Group, which included artists like Leland Bell, Nell Blaine, and Larry Rivers.
Her early works often featured biomorphic forms and gestural brushwork, reflecting the influence of Abstract Expressionism. However, she gradually shifted towards a more geometric and hard-edged style, incorporating collage elements and exploring the interplay of color, line, and form. Her work was most influenced by Mondrian and Cubism and later Matisse, whose cutouts influenced her departure into her reliefs beginning in the early 70's. Rothschild was a member and later president of the American Abstract Artists Association, was an active participant in the groundbreaking "Forum 49" exhibition and was an early member of the Long Point Gallery cooperative in Provincetown with Robert Motherwell.
Starting in 1948, and through most of the 50s, Rothschild spent most of her time in the relative isolation of the Monterey peninsula in California. Here she hoped to further develop her personal aesthetics away from the cacophony of New York City.
Throughout her career, Rothschild's work was exhibited in numerous solo and group shows both in the United States and internationally. She had solo exhibitions at prestigious galleries such as Knoedler & Company, the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and the Von der Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal, Germany. In 1998, The Met held a retrospective of her work, which subsequently traveled to the Phillips Collection, and SFMoMa.
She was a trustee of the American Federation of Arts and served as a guest artist at the Pratt Institute and Rhode Island School of Design. Her art is also included in the collections of major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, the Art Institute of Chicago, LACMA, SFMOMA, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1945 Jane Street Group
1946 Joseph Luyber Galleries, NY, NY
1951 Blair Gallery, Monterey, CA
1952 Blair Gallery, Monterey, CA
1953 Blair Gallery, Monterey, CA
1957 Rose Fried Gallery, NY, NY
1962 Knapik Gallery, NY, NY
1964 Rose Fried Gallery, NY, NY
1964 Bragazzi Gallery, Wellfleet, Mass.
1965 Bragazzi Gallery, Wellfleet, Mass.
1967 Wellfleet Art Gallery, Wellfleet, Mass
1967 Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY
1968 La Boétie Gallery, NY, NY
1971 Wellfleet Art Gallery, Wellfleet, Mass
1972 Centennial Art Gallery, Saint Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ
1972 State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY
1975 Lee Ault & Co., New York, New York
1976 Annely Juda Fine Art, London, England
1976 Lee Ault & Co., New York, New York
1977 Neuberger Museum, State University of New York at Purchase, Purchase, NY
1978 Long Point Gallery, Provincetown, Mass
1978 Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Mass
1978 Lee Ault & Co., NY, NY
1978 Philomathean Society Art Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1979 Landmark Gallery, NY, NY
1980 Long Point Gallery, Provincetown, Mass
1981 Annely Juda Fine Art, London, England
1981 Wellesley College Art Museum, Wellesley, Mass.
1982 Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery, Keene State College, Keene, NH
1983 Centro di Cultura di Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Italy
1985 Long Point Gallery, Provincetown, Mass.
1985 Iolas Jackson Gallery, NY, NY
1985 Juda Rowan Gallery, London, England
1987 Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery, NY, NY
1988 Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
1988 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
1988 Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery, NY, NY
1989 Ingber Gallery, NY, NY
1990 Long Point Gallery, Provincetown, Mass.
1991 State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
1992 Andre Zarre Gallery, NY, NY
1992 U of Mich Art Museum
1998 The Met
1999 The Phillips Collection
2001 SFMOMA
2001 Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ
2002 Knoedler and Co.
2002 State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
2003 Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal, Germany
2004 Hacket-Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2004 Pollock Gallery, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX
2004 Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, Germany
COLLECTIONS
Art Institute of Chicago (Interior View, 1945)
Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland
Centre Pompidou (Scaffolding of Tyre, 1948, Crazy Jane I, 1975)
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts
The Fogg Art Museum (False Legs Hang on, Untitled, 1946, Untitled, 1946, etc.)
Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, New York
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois
LACMA (Untitled Composition, 1946)
The Met (Grey Tangent, 1945)
MOMA (Untitled, 1946)
Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art, Monterey, California
Museum of Contemporary Art, Auckland, New Zealand
The National Gallery, Smithsonian (The Gothic XI, 1991, Untitled (recto), 1940s, Untitled, 1940s, etc.)
Neuberger Museum, Purchase, New York
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Whirlygig II, 1990, Figure and Object, 1946, etc.)
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (Untitled Abstraction with an Eye, 1945, Untitled Abstraction, 1945-1946, Color Proof for Luyber Portfolio (recto); Outline Proof for Luyber Portfolio (verso), 1946, etc.)
The Phillips Collection (Interior, 1970)
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine
Pollock Works on Paper Study Collection, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas
Princeton University Art Museum (Untitled, 1946)
Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts
Saint Peter's College, Jersey City, New Jersey
Sammlung Ludwig Museum, Aachen, Germany
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
Smith College Art Museum, Northampton, Massachusetts
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
TATE Modern (Untitled Composition, 1945)
Washington University Gallery of Art, Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri
Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina
Wellesley College Art Museum
The Whitney (Untitled, 1949, Untitled Composition, 1949, Untitled, 1949)
William A. Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 TATE Modern
2020 Color Works, Kraushaar Galleries, New York, New York
2020 Women of Atelier 17, Bendheim Gallery, Greenwich Arts Council, Greenwich, Connecticut
2020 Black and White Prints and Works on Paper, Alpha 137 Gallery, NY, NY
2019 Selections from the Pollock Works on Paper Study Collection, Pollock Gallery/Division of Art, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas
2006 Striking the Right Notes: Music in American Art, Cahoon Museum of American Art, Cotuit, Massachusetts
2005 New York School: Another View, Opalka Gallery, The Sage Colleges, Albany, New York [cat.]
2003 American Cutout, New York Studio School, New York, New York
2003 The Jane Street Gallery: Celebrating New York's First Artist Cooperative, Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, New York [cat.]
2002 Art in Embassies Program, United States Embassy, Rabat, Morocco [cat.]
2000 September Selections, Knoedler & Company, New York, New York
2000 Pasted Pictures: Collage and Abstraction in the Twentieth Century, Knoedler & Company, New York, New York [cat.]
1999 Summertime: Group Show, Knoedler & Company, New York, New York
2000 Encounters with Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1997) [cat.]; traveled to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1997)
1996 Leo Manso, Robert Motherwell and Judith Rothschild: A Memorial Exhibition, The Century Association, New York, New York
1994 Hofmann and Provincetown, Boston University Art Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts [cat.]
1993 USA on Paper, Copenhagen City Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark
1993 Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, etc., etc., Alice Simsar Gallery, Ann Arbor, Michigan
1991 Twenty-Five Women Artists, Woodstock Artists Association, Woodstock, New York
1990 Four Abstract Artists: Sally Michel Avery, Ernest Frazer, Nicholas Marsicano, Judith Rothschild, Woodstock Artists Association, Woodstock, New York
1989 Figuration-Abstraktion, Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, Germany
1988 Fläche-Figur-Raum, Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, Germany [cat.]
Crosscurrents/An Exchange Exhibition Between Guild Hall Museum and the
Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Guild Hall Museum, Easthampton, New York [cat.]; traveled to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts,
1986 American Abstract Artists 1936-1986/Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, New York; traveled to the Hillwood Art Gallery, Long Island University, C.W. Post College, Brookville, New York
1982 Meisterwerke der Moderne/Masterpieces of the Moderns, Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, Germany [cat.]
1981 Tracking Marvelous, Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, New York, New York [cat.]
1981 Klassische Moderne nach 1939, Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne, Germany [cat.]
1981 The Language of Abstraction / As Presented by the American Abstract Artists / Works
1981 Marilyn Pearl Gallery, New York, New York
1979 Hans Hofmann as Teacher: Drawings by His Students, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York, New York [cat.]
1977 Group Exhibition of Gallery Artists, Long Point Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown Painters 1890s-1970s, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York;
traveled to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown,
Massachusetts [cat.]
1976 10 Artists, Landmark Gallery, New York, New York
1976 Women, Art 1976, Loeb Center, New York University, New York, New York [cat.]
1975 118 Artists, Landmark Gallery, New York, New York (1976)
1972 The Non-Objective World 1939-1955, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, England [cat.]
1970 The Still Poetic Moon, La Boétie Gallery, New York, New York [cat.]
1969 American, Israeli, and European Paintings, La Boétie Gallery, New York, New York
1967 20 Contemporaries, La Boétie Gallery, New York, New York
1967 Collage International - from Picasso to the Present, Contemporary Arts Museum,
Houston, Texas
1956 International Collage Exhibition, Rose Fried Gallery, New York, New York
1955 First Pacific Coast Biennial Exhibition of Paintings and Watercolors, 1955, Santa
Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California [cat.]
1955 Twenty-First Annual Exhibition, Boston Society for Independent Artists, Boston,
Massachusetts
1952 American Abstract Artists, Sixteenth Annual Exhibition, New York, New York [cat.]
British, Danish, American Abstract Artists: The American Abstract Artists Observe
their 15th Anniversary with an Exhibition of Works of Abstract Artists of Three
Nations, Riverside Museum, New York, New York
1951 Post-Abstract Painting 1950, France-America, Hawthorne Memorial Art Gallery,
Provincetown Art Association, Provincetown, Massachusetts [cat.]
1950 Realités Nouvelles, 5éme Salon, Palais des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris,
France [cat.]
1949 55th Annual Exhibition, The Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado [cat.]
1949 Forum 49, Gallery 200, Provincetown, Massachusetts
New England Painting and Sculpture, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston,
Massachusetts [cat.]
1948 Group Show, Pat Wall Gallery, Monterey, California
1948 Gouaches & Watercolors: Judith Rothschild, Esther Geller, Carl G. Nelson, Boris
Mirski Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts [cat.]
1948 59th Annual Exhibition of Watercolors and Drawings, The Art Institute of Chicago,
Chicago, Illinois (1949) [cat.]
1948 58th Annual Exhibition of American Painting and Sculpture - Abstract and Surrealist
American Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (1948)
1947 Small Paintings by the Group, Joseph Luyber Galleries, New York, New York
1948 142nd Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania [cat.]
1946 Critics' Show, Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, New York [cat.]
1946 American Abstract Artists Eleventh Annual Exhibition, New York, New York