Description:

Louise Fishman
American, (1939-2021)
Untitled, 1985
charcoal on paper
Signed lower right.

Label verso: Lennon, Weinberg Inc., New York.

Biography excerpt from the Archives of askART: "Louise Fishman, Who Gave Abstract Expressionism a New Tone, Dies at 82, Obituary", The New York Times, by Neil Genzlinger, August 3, 2021

Her paintings infused a once-male-dominated genre with a feminist, lesbian sensibility.
Louise Fishman, a widely exhibited artist who imbued her Abstract Expressionist paintings and other works with elements of feminism and gay and Jewish identity, died on July 26 in Manhattan. She was 82.

Her spouse, Ingrid Nyeboe, said the cause was complications of an ablation, a heart procedure.
Ms. Fishman continually explored new themes and techniques, usually giving her own spin to the male-dominated genre of Abstract Expressionism.

She was influenced early in her career by the first-generation Abstract Expressionists, men from the Jackson Pollock era, but by the mid-1960s she began to immerse herself in the gay and feminist movements, joining protest organizations like WITCH — the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy From Hell — and sharing ideas and frustrations with other women in a consciousness-raising group. It led her to rethink her art.

"I decided never to paint again unless it came out of my own experience," she told The Brooklyn Rail in 2012. "Because, I've said this many times, being in my woman's group and examining deeply where everything came from in my work, I realized that I hadn't had a thought outside of the male tradition of art history and contemporary art history."

Among the works she produced after that was her "Angry" series, begun in the early 1970s, each canvas a name amid a furious field of paint. It was intended to evoke the anger she imagined was felt by women in her group as well as various public figures. There was Angry Marilyn, for Marilyn Monroe, and Angry Paula, for the gallerist Paula Cooper. And, of course, Angry Louise.

After a trip to Central Europe in 1988 with a friend who was a Holocaust survivor, Ms. Fishman expanded on the Jewish and Holocaust themes that she had already begun to explore. For some of the works she made in that period, she mixed her paint with ash she had picked up in Auschwitz.

These types of paintings set her apart from the original Abstract Expressionists.

"Unlike Ab-Ex, which, despite its chest-thumping angst, was largely apolitical, Ms. Fishman hasn't hesitated to introduce topical experience into her canvases," John Goodrich wrote in The New York Sun in 2006.

  • Dimensions: 12"H x 18"W (sight), 16 3/4"H x 22 3/4"W (frame)
  • Medium: charcoal on paper

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