About

“Connections” is the title of Renee Rosen’s retrospective art book. It is also the motivating force behind more than a half century of her work. Rosen finds connections with her Abstract Expressionist mentors, and the working class immigrant Brooklynites she grew up with. Looking inward while reaching out, her work raises eternal questions and engages change. Issues are broached, sometimes in a subtle, underlying way; sometimes with a stark vision of bold truths.  Rosen struggled with the distance of modernism, ultimately inventing a unique visual stew of intuitive abstractions, integrated with the representational ideals of Social Realism. This is her zeitgeist: Art connecting to Life.

Growing up in 1930’s Brooklyn, Renee absorbed her Russian immigrant parents’ Jewish cultural roots and dedication to social justice. Their home was a lively center, often hosting community meetings. Early memories show the seeds of her dialectical vision.

“As a young child, I became aware of their concerns while I sat at the kitchen table playing with pencil and paper as my mother and her friends talked over coffee. My mind slipped into blank space amidst the buzzing of voices, the aroma of chicken soup cooking on the stove and the play of light coming in through the curtained kitchen window. First I scribbled and doodled, then I deliberately worked for different effects, fine feather strokes, curlicues and zigzags. Pencil and paper was all that was available, but it was enough to satisfy my need.”

Gifted and enthusiastic, Renee was enrolled in art classes at the Brooklyn Museum and received a scholarship from the National Academy of Fine Arts. Later studies included sculpture with Chaim Gross, painting with the Soyer brothers, and drawing at the Art Student’s League.

Although briefly under the influence of abstract expressionists Elaine DeKooning and Helen Frankenthaler, the young artist turned to landscape and still life painting, finding meaning in their forms. At the Brooklyn Museum Art School she was immersed in new ideas concerning line, color and form. Liberated by the school’s embrace of “art for art’s sake,” Rosen’s work flourished as she explored a period of free abstraction. Ultimately, Rosen turned towards representational work dealing with the emerging feminist movement.

“I needed to carry my history, and my involvement in current events, into my art. I had to create paintings that continued to explore aesthetic possibilities speaking of our time in history.”

Rosen’s first solo exhibition, “Consciousness” (1977), held at the Great Neck House Gallery, New York, featured her timely feminist work. The show was well received, it’s impact was palpable and provoked passionate discussion and reflection among viewers.

Throughout the 1980s, she continued to experiment in new artistic directions, grappling with the dialectic between control and intuition, inner and outer, individual and social. Combining unique textures of mono printing, created through cloth application, with pastel drawing, Rosen created a series of beautifully intuitive work. In a later development, this abstract printing was brought to the canvas, merged with more composed representational oil painting.

“Combining realism with abstraction was something I was always interested in. After all, isn’t that what we see in life all the time?”

In the 1990’s, she extends her conceptual merging of forms with a striking new synthesis of techniques. Compelling abstract brushstrokes share the canvas with meticulous collage work, sourced from the realism of photographic images. These divergent techniques co-exist in separate spaces, creating a greater whole through contrast, richness and depth. A triumphant solo show, “Goddess/USA” (Manhattan, 1998), presented a series of these dynamic and sensual works, revealing inner and outer landscapes of contemporary feminism.

Rosen’s work was recognized internationally, particularly in Oronsco, Poland (1992), where she participated in an extended residency at the Notoro Art Symposium and Exhibition. There she was well received, as was her work in Italy (1995) a few years later.

Rosen continued exploring the integration of abstract/representational, with oil and collage, through progressive periods of innovation. In the series, “Black and White and Red (Read) All Over” (Merkin Hall Gallery, Manhattan, 2003), she limited herself to the stark polarity of those three colors, collaged with the black and white of newspaper clips. The result is charged and political, drawing the viewer into half-told stories, in text and image.

After emerging from the loss of her dear husband Martin in 1997, Rosen’s work shifted dramatically, in an emotional explosion of broad, loose brush work and brilliant color. There is minimal use of collage in these works, what stands out is the compelling storytelling of inner journeys, her “Passing On/ Choices” series. One feels the disorienting landscape of “What Remains”, the emotional tidal wave of “Go With the Flow”, the Renoir-esque joy of “Springtime Lovers”, and the contemplation of time passing.

Rosen’s masterful American Portraits series harkens back to to her early childhood fascination with “drawing a classmate’s profile”, now expressed with the full powers of a mature visionary artist. Years of experimenting with new ways of working on canvas, while merging seemingly incompatible forms, come together in these portraits, which are both personal and communitarian.

Over time, issues changed, techniques changed, yet throughout, in Rosen’s search for connections, the dialogue is revisited and reworked. A pinnacle late work, “The Air We Share,” subsumes photographic images into the paint and collage itself. Rosen’s poem about the painting, text drawn on the canvas, becomes veins or synapses, making the connections, carrying the oxygen. In this painting, everything is part of everything; in both technique and meaning.

Taken as a whole, Rosen’s work is a remarkably committed tale of artistic growth, grappling with the dialogues and synthesis of public/private, abstract/ representational, narrative/non-narrative, oil/collage, individual/social. True to her childhood roots, Rosen engages the social and political issues of her time, in an aesthetic which travels with the artistic issues of the time.

Looking back on Rosen’s early landscapes, they seem both representational and abstract. The curves of the land are distilled into geometrics, which then suggest other fantastical realities. Even in this very early work, Rosen’s dialectic is apparent - when does one become the other? Joan Arbeiter, author of Lives and Works: Talks with Women Artists, shares this perceptive critique:

“Abstractions which transcend space and place co-existing with depictions of common objects achieve a unique whole. Meanings which are universal and yet personal reconcile to achieve a dazzling, unified visual art. Full of mystery, meaning, and beauty.”