ETHEL SCHWABACHER, C. 1955
Sustained international recognition has come to the art of Ethel Schwabacher in recent months. Her paintings are included in an exhibition titled Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction (1940-70) currently on view at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, and scheduled to travel to Fondation Van Gogh in Arles, France, and in 2024 to the Kunsthalle Bielefeld in Germany. In addition to the celebration of Schwabacher’s work in the press releases and reviews of this travelling show, her artistic mastery has been recognized in a new volume titled Abstract Expressionism, The Women, published by Merrell in 2023.1
Ethel Kremer Schwabacher (1903-1984) was born in New York City and attended classes at the Art Students League from 1918 to 1927. She studied painting with Max Weber and sculpture with Robert Laurent. After additional instruction in sculpture at the National Academy of Design, she held an apprenticeship with sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington and in the late 1920s she continued her study of painting in France and Austria.
From 1934 to 1936 she was a private student of Arshile Gorky, who introduced her to automatism and biomorphic abstraction. After Gorky’s death she published a monograph on the artist in 1957. Schwabacher’s first solo exhibition was in 1935 at Georgette Passedoit Gallery in New York, and another took place in 1947 at the same venue.
After her marriage in 1935 to Wolfgang Schwabacher, a lawyer, the couple had two children, Brenda (b. 1936), and Christopher (b. 1941). Her husband set up a studio for her in Pennington, New Jersey, where the family had a farmhouse.
The sudden death of Schwabacher’s husband in 1951 turned the artist in a new direction for her work. Just at the time that women artists were becoming identified with Abstract Expressionism and participating in group exhibitions, Schwabacher rearranged her apartment to create a larger studio. There she produced a constant stream of paintings dealing with themes of maternity, creativity, and the forces of nature. In addition to her abiding interest in the miracles of the natural world, she incorporated mythological themes for deep psychological explorations of the self. She attempted to consider her subconscious and joined automatism with abstract forms related to nature.
Ethel Schwabacher’s trajectory as a renowned artist of the twentieth century follows an extraordinary course. She can be separated from many women artists of the 1950s because of her yearly invitation to the Whitney Museum Annual Exhibitions, and her participation in other exhibitions of contemporary painting. Schwabacher was also included in the Nature in Abstraction exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1958.
Betty Parsons, the noted art dealer for Jackson Pollock, and other Abstract Expressionists, became Schwabacher’s dealer in the early 1950s, and presented solo exhibitions of her paintings until 1962.
In the same year that Willem de Kooning introduced his “Women Series,” Schwabacher created her own representations of women, based on her personal experience as a mother of two children and a recent widow.
While gestural abstraction for male artists of the Abstract Expressionist era channeled the unconscious of the artist, for Ethel Schwabacher abstraction combined the energy of movement with the psyche, and her awareness of the material presence. Her paintings of the 1950s engage psychological aspects of landscapes, creativity, and experiences of womanhood for the postwar Modern Woman. Nature is a frequent subject that resulted in brilliant gestural compositions. She noted her affinity with the natural world:
My difficulty lies in the fact that I constantly see further possibilities, the calm of the sky as it extends upwards, the blazing light of the sun, the marvelous fluidity of water, the shining dewdrop on the first crocus, the icicle hanging from a winter bough, flashing immaculate. Perhaps it is unfortunate that I see these things because it fills me with longing to paint them, a longing to accomplish the impossible.2
Red Bird, 1955 [plate 2] is an example of her brilliant response to scarlet tanagers. She wrote in her journal:
As the tanager flew across my space, my ellipse, he set into motion a marvelous series of visual events. The red oval of his small body set color planes in a circle around his flight . . . .There was a beginning, continuity, and an end to his brief appearance. The space above him was heaven. The space below was grass. Two expanses; of colors, of space. This was only the beginning of the majestic play that I was witnessing.3
Nature is at the forefront of several works that are identified with certain locations where Schwabacher lived in her early years and later. Pelham IV: Rockgarden, 1957 [plate 8] and Pennington: Return and Departure of Birds, 1957 [plate 9]. While the notion of a flight of birds
WOMAN #5, 1954, OIL ON CANVAS, 24 ⅞ X 39 ⅞ IN.that return and depart occupied her thoughts, Schwabacher introduced several characters in Greek mythology with dramatic examples of departures.
Perhaps the death of her father when she was in her teens, and her husband’s death in 1951, attracted her to classical stories of the plight of a father and daughter for such paintings as Antigone I, 1958 [plate 6]. In her journal filled with many musings on her life, Schwabacher asked herself questions:
In the ancient Greek drama, Antigone had gone forth with Oedipus after blinding himself and being cast into exile and had traveled with him to a distant land in which he was to die. She had been a faithful companion. But let us think for a moment: how did she accept the extraordinary reversal of her concept of her father?4
Such characters from Greek mythology as Prometheus, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Antigone were explored by Schwabacher for deeply personal meditations about separation from loved ones. Her provocative reactions in painting featured the choice of a vivid palette, at times applied in thin washes that were allowed to drip and to flow.
In addition to an abiding interest in the miracles of the natural world, Ethel Schwabacher found mythological subjects that became sources for her continuous engagement with the realities of life itself.
3 Ibid., p. 49.
4 Ibid., p. 199.
Joan M. Marter is Distinguished Professor Emerita, Department of Art History, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. © Berry Campbell, New York 1 Ellen G. Landau and Joan M. Marter, Abstract Expressionism, The Women (London: Merrell, 2023). 2 Brenda S. Webster and Judith Emlyn Johnson, editors, Hungry for Light: The Journal of Ethel Schwabacher (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1993) pp. 111-112. NIGHT, 1957, OIL ON CANVAS, 42 X 70 IN. COLLECTION OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART.
PLATE 1. PROMETHEUS, 1959, OIL ON LINEN, 85 X 102 IN.
PLATE 2. RED BIRD, 1955, OIL ON CANVAS, 54 X 45 IN.
PLATE 3. PLURABELLE, 1956, OIL ON LINEN, 50 ¼ X 60 IN.
PLATE 4. SEASONS AND DAYS: JULY, 1955, OIL ON LINEN, 50 X 40 IN.
PLATE 5. STEPS OF THE SUN, 1957, OIL ON LINEN, 66 X 55 IN.
PLATE 6. ANTIGONE I, 1958, OIL ON LINEN, 51 X 85 IN.
PLATE 7. ORIGINS I, 1958, OIL ON LINEN, 60 X 70 IN.
PLATE 8. PELHAM IV: ROCKGARDEN, 1957, OIL ON LINEN, 60 X 50 IN.
PLATE 9. PENNINGTON: RETURN AND DEPARTURE OF BIRDS, 1957, OIL ON LINEN, 60 X 85 IN.
PLATE 10. UNTITLED (WOMAN SERIES), 1955, OIL ON LINEN, 36 X 30 IN.
PLATE 11. RETURN AND DEPARTURE, 1956, OIL ON LINEN, 50 X 72 IN.
CV
Birth, 1903
Art Students League, New York, 1918
Studied with George Bridgman
National Academy of Design, New York, 1920
Studied sculpture with Brenda Putnam, 1921
Studied sculpture with Anna Hyatt Huntington, 1923
Art Students League, New York, 1926-1927
Studied painting with Max Weber and sculpture with Robert Laurent
Independent study in Europe, 1928-1934
Studied with Arshile Gorky, 1934-1936
Death, 1984
Passedoit Gallery, New York, 1935.
Passedoit Gallery, New York, Ethel Schwabacher: Pastels and Oils, 1947.
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, Schwabacher: Paintings and Glass Collages, 1951-1953, 1953.
Women’s City Club, New York, 1955.
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, Schwabacher, 1956.
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1957.
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, Ethel Schwabacher: Recent Paintings, 1960.
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1962.
Greenross Gallery, New York, 1964.
Gallery 219, State University of New York, Buffalo, New York, Visions on the Way: Paintings by Ethel Schwabacher, 1972.
Bodley Gallery, New York, Of People: Ethel Schwabacher Pastels, Jeanne Reynal Mosaics, 1976.
Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Ethel Schwabacher: A Retrospective Exhibition, 1987. (Traveled to Mills College Art Gallery, Oakland, California, 1988; University Art Gallery, State University of New York, Albany, New York, 1988)
Gallery Schlesinger-Boisante, New York, Ethel Schwabacher: Paintings from the Fifties, 1987.
871 Fine Arts, San Francisco, California, Ethel Schwabacher: Paintings from the 1950s and 1960s, 1988.
Things of Beauty Art Gallery, Albany, New York, Ethel Schwabacher: Mythical Paintings, 1988-1989.
Gallery Schlesinger, New York, Ethel Schwabacher: Abstract Expressionist Works, 1989.
Gallery Schlesinger, New York, Ethel Schwabacher: Hungry for Light, 1993.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Women! Women! (of the 50s), 2016.
Berry Campbell, New York, Ethel Schwabacher: Woman in Nature (Paintings from the 1950s), 2023.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture, Watercolors, and Drawings, 1947. Passedoit Gallery, New York, 1947.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, 1949.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, 1951.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, 1952-1953.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Recent Acquisitions, 1953.
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 149th Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, 1954.
Riverside Museum, New York, 10 Women Artists, 1954.
Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 1954.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, 1955-1956.
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1956.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Annual Exhibition of Sculpture, Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, 1956-1957.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Annual Exhibition of Sculpture, Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, 1957-1958.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Nature in Abstraction, 1958.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The Museum and Its Friends: Twentieth-Century American Art from Collections of the Friends of the Whitney Museum, 1958.
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1958.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Annual Exhibition of Sculpture, Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, 1959.
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Twenty-Sixth Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, 1959.
Brooklyn Museum, New York, 20th Biennial International Watercolor Exhibition, 1959.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Recent Acquisitions, 1959.
John Herron Art Institute, Indiana University, 1959.
Indianapolis Art Institute, Indiana, 1959. Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1959.
American Federation of the Arts, New York, 1959-1960.
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 60 American Painters, 1960: Abstract Expressionist Painting of the Fifties, 1960.
Dord Fitz Gallery, Amarillo, Texas, 1960.
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1960.
I.B.M. Gallery, New York, 1960.
University of Iowa, Iowa City, 1960.
Mexico City Museum, Mexico, Inter-American Biennial, 1960.
Brooklyn Museum, New York, 21st Biennial International Watercolor Exhibition, 1961.
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The 1961 Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, 1961-1962.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Annual Exhibition 1961: Contemporary Painting, 1961-1962.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Thirtieth Anniversary Exhibition, 1961.
Dord Fitz Gallery, Amarillo, Texas, 1961.
Dustin Rice Gallery, New York, 1961.
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Michigan, Watercolor Exhibition, 1961.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Penthouse Exhibition, 1962.
Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Inaugural Exhibition, 1962.
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1962.
Sidney Wolfson Gallery, New York, 1962.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Sixty Years of American Art: Works from the Permanent Collection, 1963.
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, 1963.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Selections from the Art Lending Service, 1963.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Annual Exhibition 1963: Contemporary American Painting, 1963-1964.
The St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri, 1963.
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, 1963. (lending service)
Baltimore Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, 1963. (lending service)
Greenross Gallery, New York, 1964.
Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1964. (lending service)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Twentieth-Century Works from the Permanent Collection, 1967.
Finch College Museum of Art, New York, Betty Parsons’s Private Collection, 1968. Graham Gallery, New York, 1969.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Women in the Permanent Collection 1970-1971.
Museum of Religious Art, Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York, The Sacred Image in Traditional and Contemporary Art, East and West, 1977-1978.
Rutgers University Art Gallery, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Realism and Realities: The Other Side of American Painting, 1940-1960, 1982.
Gallery Schlesinger–Boisante, New York, Abstraction–Re-Visions of the 1950s, 1988.
Graham Gallery, New York, The 30s and 40s: Paintings by Women Artists, 1988.
871 Fine Arts, San Francisco, California, Abstraction/1950s, 1989.
Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee, American Women Artists: The 20th Century, 1989-1990. (Traveled to Queensborough Community College Art Gallery, Queens, New York, 1990.)
Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Abstract Expressionism: Other Dimensions, 1989. (Traveled to Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Florida, 1989; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, 1990; Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1990; Whitney Museum of American Art, 1990)
The Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York, Watercolors from the Abstract Expressionist Era, 1990.
The Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, New Jersey, Watercolor Across the Ages: With Selected 20th Century American Works, 1991.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Women of the Fifties, 1993.
Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, New York, Reclaiming Artists of the New York School, Toward a More Inclusive View of the 1950s, 1994.
The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York, Dark Images, Bright Prospects: The Survival of the Figure after World War II, 1997.
Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, New York, Women and Abstract Expressionism: Painting and Sculpture, 1945-59, 1997. (Traveled to Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York)
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Artists of the 1950s, 1997.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Artists of the 1950s: The Development of Abstraction, 1998.
Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York, Shaping a Generation: The Art and Artists of Betty Parsons, 1999.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Art for Art’s Sake–Credo of the 50s, 2000.
Gary Snyder Fine Art, New York, Abstract Expressionism: Expanding the Canon, 2001.
Gary Snyder Fine Art, New York, 500 Works on Paper 1922-2002, 2002.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Buffie Johnson, Transcendentalist & Women Artists of the 50s, 2002.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Betty Parsons and The Women, 2005. (Traveled to: The Opalka Gallery, The Sage Colleges, Albany, New York)
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Paper Works by Abstract Masters, 2006.
Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, New York, In Color, Recent Gifts to the Baruch College Collection, 2006.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Buffie Johnson & Friends, 2007.
Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, Pathways and Parallels: Roads to Abstract Expressionism, 2007.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Masters of Abstraction, 2008.
Robert Miller Gallery, New York, Beyond the Canon, Small Scale American Abstraction, 1945-1965, 2008-2009.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Paper Proposes Pleasure & Sculptors, 2009.
Instituto Cervantes, New York, Amster Yard Gallery, The Spanish Nexus: Spanish Artists in New York, 1930-1960, 2009-2010.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, 50s & 60s Abstract Artists, “50s & 60s Prices?,” 2011.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Little Gems: Small Paintings and Paper Pieces, 2011.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, TALL & small, Abstract Paintings and Sculptures, 2013-2014.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Abstract Approaches, 2014-2015.
Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, Women of Abstract Expressionism, 2016. (Traveled to Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, 2017; Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, California, 2017)
Amar Gallery, London, England, Hiding in Plain Sight, 2018.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Abstract-Schmabstract, 2019.
Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York, Heroines of Abstract Expressionism, 2019.
Anita Shapolsky Gallery, New York, Precious Gems, 2021.
Whitechapel Gallery, London, Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-70, 2023. (Traveled to Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles, France; Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany)
Ethel Schwabacher Betty Parsons Gallery Show Art Students League Registration Card Betty Parsons Gallery Show Denver Art Museum ExhibitionAnita Shapolsky Art Foundation, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania
The Art Museum of Greater Lafayette, Indiana
Brooklyn Museum, New York
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York
University of Delaware, University Gallery, Newark, Delaware
Denver Art Museum, Colorado
The Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, Long Island, New York
Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Scotland
The Jewish Museum, New York
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota
Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, The City University of New York
Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey
Mougins Museum of Classical Art, Mougins, France
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida
Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona
The Rockefeller University, New York
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California
Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Sweet Briar College Art Collection and Galleries, Sweet Briar, Virginia
Syracuse University Art Museum, New York
Telfair Museums, Savannah, Georgia
Tougaloo College Art Collections, Mississippi
Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut
Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
OEDIPUS AT COLONOS, NUMBER 2, 1959, OIL ON LINEN, 85 ¼ X 60 ¼ IN COLLECTION OF THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART.
Christine Berry and Martha Campbell opened Berry Campbell Gallery in the heart of Chelsea on the ground floor in 2013. The gallery has a fine-tuned program representing artists of post-war American painting that have been overlooked or neglected, particularly women of Abstract Expressionism.Since its inception, the gallery has developed a strong emphasis in research to bring to light artists overlooked due to age, race, gender, or geography. This unique perspective has been increasingly recognized by curators, collectors, and the press.
Berry Campbell has been included and reviewed in publications such as Architectural Digest, Art & Antiques, Art in America, Artforum, Artnet News, ArtNews, The Brooklyn Rail, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, East Hampton Star, the Financial Times, Galerie Magazine, Luxe Magazine, The New Criterion, the New York Times, Vogue, Wall Street Journal, and Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art.
In September 2022, Berry Campbell moved to 524 West 26th Street, New York. The 9,000-square-foot gallery houses 4,500 square feet of exhibition space, including a skylit main gallery and four smaller galleries, as well as two private viewing areas, a full-sized library, executive offices and substantial on-site storage space. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. or by appointment. For further information please call at 212.924.2178, visit our website at www.berrycampbell.com, or email at info@berrycampbell.com.
UNTITLED, C. 1950, OIL ON LINEN, 10 X 12 IN.
COVER: PROMETHEUS (DETAIL), 1959, OIL ON LINEN, 85 X 102 IN.
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