Still Life

Artist Judith Rothschild (American, 1921 - 1993)

Date1948

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionsframe: 30 1/2 × 26 × 2 in. (77.5 × 66 × 5.1 cm)
canvas: 24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm)

Credit LineGift of Patricia Wyngaarden Fitzpatrick

Exhibition History"Legendary Voices: Art for the Next Century," KIA (September 7 - February 18, 2025)Label TextJudith Rothschild came of age as an artist in New York during the 1940s and was influenced by European avant-garde movements and artists like Fernand Léger. Throughout her career, Rothschild struggled to reconcile her figurative and abstract works. While a proponent of abstraction, she also believed that Abstract Expressionists and artists like Piet Mondrian removed too much from art and that the work was impersonal and distanced from the human experience. Rothschild questioned how art could “say anything meaningful about life when it avoids all traces of life as corporeally experienced.” The artist experienced success early in her career. Still Life was painted just three years after her first solo show in 1945 at the Jane Street Gallery in New York City. With its tightly composed geometric abstraction and a title that gives definition to the scene, this painting demonstrates the balancing act she worked to achieve. Rothschild created abstract imagery in which the tangible subject could be identified. Here, viewers can make out the shapes of a lemon and lime, fruits that are certainly standard in many still life compositions. Rothschild was determined to set her own path to artistic success. She worked in New York during the heyday of the male-dominated Abstract Expressionists, and rejected much of their stylistic approach. Rothschild moved to California, where she reconciled the figurative with the abstract in her own bold, fervid manner. And while her European and Cubist-inspired forms might seem commonplace today, in the 1940s and 50s they were innovative and a fresh take on longstanding art historical traditions like landscapes and still lifes. Rothschild studied art at Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills and at the Art Students League in New York City. In 1945, she was accepted into the prestigious American Abstract Artists organization. Rothschild was committed to bettering her fellow artists and was involved in many art organizations. She served as the trustee of the American Federation of Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and the New York Studio School, and on several museum committees. Her work is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Phillips Collection. [Collection Highlight]

Discover More

There are no works to discover for this record.