Museum of Art

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Cover image credit: rosemarie Beck (American, 1923–2003), Daedalus and Icarus, 1984, oil on linen, 50” x 64”

Myths Retold: Paintings by Rosemarie Beck is made possible by the Rosemarie Beck Foundation’s gift of eight paintings and four studies representing scenes from The Tempest and classical mythology. The Dion Janetos ’39 Fund for Hellenic Studies provided generous funding for the publication of this catalog featuring an insightful essay by Professor R. Scott Smith, Department Chair, Classics, Humanities and Italian Studies, and the contributions of students in CLAS 601: The Power of Myth taught by Senior Lecturer, Paul Robertson.

The exhibition presents paintings and embroideries by Rosemarie Beck (1923–2003) who abandoned abstract expressionist painting in the 1950s and turned to figurative painting. For the remainder of her career, Beck depicted the complicated narratives of women in literature and Greek mythology.

The collection of the Museum of Art of the University of New Hampshire is shaped in part by artists associated with Boston Expressionism, a regional movement marked by an exploration of social, historical, and political themes underpinned by a humanist philosophy expressed figuratively. The movement coalesced in the 1940s and persisted into the 1980s through the teachings of second and third generation Boston Expressionist artists, including faculty at the University of New Hampshire who acquired and exhibited work of their contemporaries. Although Beck lived in New York and her career progressed independently from Boston Expressionist artists, she shares with them a Jewish-immigrant heritage and a propensity for figurative storytelling. Her paintings similarly display imaginative use of brilliant color, bold lines, and virtuosic handling of paint and brushwork characteristic of artists associated with the movement.

If Beck’s legacy of figurative-narrative painting is compatible with the formative core of the Museum of Art’s collection, so too is her teaching philosophy, transmitted by one of her former students, Professor Brian Chu who has taught painting and printmaking at the University of New Hampshire since 2000. Developing from Beck’s close reading of literature and Greek mythology, and the continuum of her approach to teaching, Myths Retold: Paintings by Rosemarie Beck prioritizes the interdisciplinary teaching utility of art to deepen student understanding and enrich engagement with primary sources.

Kristina L. Durocher, Director Museum of Art