Louise Fishman - Tapa dura

"The book's text...sheds new light on [Louise Fishman's] work and worldview." -Bookforum "Insightful essays by the Neuberger's chief curator, Helaine Posner; critic Nancy Princenthal; and painter Carrie Moyer; together with curator Ingrid Schaffner's interview with the artist, reveal how Fishman redefined the traditionally masculine Abstract Expressionist tradition." -Women in the Arts "Until now, there has not been a proper reflective monograph dedicated to Louise Fishman, which is surprising given the American-born artist is a tour de force in the world of abstract painting, particularly in regards to her large-scale gestural abstractions. Looking back at her decades-spanning career, this monograph honors the septuagenarian artist in the fullest context, including everything from her early years of hard-edged grid paintings to her more recent expressionistic canvases." -Interview Magazine

Painting, scraping, repainting, and texturing are all part of Louise Fishman's artistic process. Her resulting works feel at once energetic and orderly, celebratory and reverent. This book accompanies the first-ever museum survey of Fishman's largescale gestural abstractions as well as a concurrent exhibition devoted to the artist's lesser-known work in small-scale painting and sculpture. Chronologically tracing her creative path over fifty years, the book explores how in the 1960s and '70s she negotiated the constraints established by the male-dominated Abstract Expressionists to make for herself an adventurous and deeply personal painting practice. Full-color images trace a distinct transformation in Fishman's work-from minimalist grid overlays to more chaotic representations, to the textured use of ashes and beeswax, to her majestic gestural works of recent years. This volume also includes insightful essays that delve into Fishman's relationship with the Abstract Expressionist, feminist, and Jewish communities.Beautifully produced to enhance Fishman's vibrant, multilayered works in the context of modern and contemporary art, this volume will be appreciated for its subject's wide-ranging appeal as an artist and a trailblazer.