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Dear Louise:
a tribute to Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)

Introduction

Cheim & Read is pleased to announce Dear Louise: A Tribute To Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021) an exhibition of paintings spanning four decades of the artist’s career. The show will open on May 18 at the gallery’s Chelsea location, 547 West 25th Street, New York, and run through June 30. This is Fishman’s ninth solo exhibition at the gallery.

Writing in the Brooklyn Rail about Fishman’s most recent solo at Cheim & Read (September 7 – October 28, 2017), the art historian and critic Jan Avgikos offered her own tribute: “We owe Fishman a lot. Over the course of more than half a century painting in NYC, she’s legitimately laid claim to more idioms of abstraction than any other painter. She’s adamant in her embrace of gestural abstraction and its potential to achieve affective ends—no negation, no apologies.”

Always an outsider, as an artist, a feminist, and a lesbian, she defied biases inside and outside the art world as she developed a non-objective practice not beholden to the machismo of Abstract Expressionism. Finding a kindred spirit in Eva Hesse, she embraced a personal ethos of “material experimentation and formal play,” as Aruna D’Souza wrote in the catalogue for the 2017 show.

The works in Dear Louise display the range and depth of Fishman’s art, beginning with Mine and Yours (1979), which she made after her return to oil painting following years of politicized language-based works on paper, its rich, sparkling impasto a testament to her comment, “I’ve always approached my work as if it were sculpture... my approach to color is as a material.”

The paintings that follow underscore the variety and freedom of Fishman’s outlook, from the aggressive blackness of Night of Watching #2 (1988) to the misty, Venetian-inspired colors of White Clouds, Blue Mountains (1996); the linear scaffolding of My City (2002); and the Jenga-like blocks of earth tones in To a Tree (2004). In her final decade, she pushed her means of expression to further extremes: the rough, brooding swathes of color in A Cold Spring (2011) and the minimal mark-making of A Better Resurrection (2013) to the high-contrast, translucent swipes in Sharps and Flats (2017).

In these works, as Nathan Kernan wrote in the catalogue for her first exhibition at Cheim & Read (1998), “formalism has ‘grown together’ with natural forces, chance, intellectual courage, the inherent qualities of paint and the rhythms and reach of the body to produce powerfully suggestive works of alchemical transmutations and shifting forms.” At the time, Fishman was nearly 60 and would continue as a creative force for more than 20 years, ever changing, ever exploring. 

Louise Fishman was born in Philadelphia and studied at the Philadelphia College of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Tyler School of Art. She earned her MFA at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1965.

Fishman’s work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; and the Jewish Museum, New York, among others.

In 2016, the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York, organized the artist’s first retrospective, which traveled to the Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia held a concurrent exhibition of her small-scale work, Paper Louise Tiny Fishman Rock.

Fishman died in New York City on July 26, 2021. The following month, a retrospective exhibition entitled A Question Of Emphasis: Louise Fishman Drawings opened at the Krannert Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 56 years after she received her MFA there.

2 column Text or Image

FS.5993 Double Dutch

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
Double Dutch, 1987
Oil on linen
25 x 17 inches
63.5 x 43.2 centimeters
CR# FS.5993

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FS.42063 Night Of Watching #2
FS.42063 Night Of Watching #2

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
Night Of Watching #2, 1988
Oil on linen
19 x 32 inches
48.3 x 81.3 centimeters
CR# FS.42063

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FS.33822 Mine and Yours
FS.33822 Mine and Yours

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
Mine and Yours, 1979
Oil on linen
42 x 36 inches
106.7 x 91.4 centimeters
CR# FS.33822

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FS.19009 Untitled (little diptych)

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
UNTITLED  1995
Oil on canvas, diptych
8 x 12 inches, overall
20.3 x 30.5 centimeters, overall
CR# FS.19009

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FS.29512 A Cold Spring (double check image quality)

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
A Cold Spring, 2011
Oil on jute
32 x 24 1/8 inches
81.3 x 61.3 centimeters
CR# FS.29512

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FS.13480 Recess (double check image - frame)

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
Recess, 2006
Oil on linen
8 x 10 inches
20.3 x 25.4 centimeters
CR# FS.13480

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FS.6525 My City
FS.6525 My City

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
My City, 2002
Oil on linen
80 x 70 inches
203.2 x 177.8 centimeters
CR# FS.6525

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FS.41473 Up and Out
FS.41473 Up and Out

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
Up and Out, 1992
Oil on linen
32 x 30 inches
81.3 x 76.2 centimeters
CR# FS.41473

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FS.12092 Rock and Ruins
FS.12092 Rock and Ruins

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
Rock and Ruins, 2005
Oil on linen
60 x 70 inches
152.4 x 177.8 centimeters
CR# FS.12092

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FS.9825 To a Tree
FS.9825 To a Tree

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
To a Tree, 2004
Oil on linen
49 x 33 inches
124.5 x 83.8 centimeters
CR# FS.9825

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FS.872 White Clouds, Blue Mountains (double check image quality)
FS.872 White Clouds, Blue Mountains (double check image quality)

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
White Clouds, Blue Mountains, 1996
Oil on linen
70 x 110 inches
177.8 x 279.4 centimeters
CR# FS.872

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2 column Text or Image

John's Place FS.4675

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
John's Place, 2000
Watercolor and ink on paper
11 x 8 1/2 inches
27.9 x 21.6 centimeters
CR# FS.4675

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John's Place FS.4673

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
John's Place, 2000
Watercolor and ink on paper
11 x 8 1/2 inches
27.9 x 21.6 centimeters
CR# FS.4673

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John's Place FS.4674

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
John's Place, 2000
Watercolor and ink on paper
11 x 8 1/2 inches
27.9 x 21.6 centimeters
CR# FS.4674

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John's Place FS.4671

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
John's Place, 2000
Watercolor and ink on paper
11 x 8 1/2 inches
27.9 x 21.6 centimeters
CR# FS.4671

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John's Place FS.4783

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
John's Place, 2000
Watercolor and ink on paper
11 x 8 1/2 inches
27.9 x 21.6 centimeters
CR# FS.4783

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A Better Resurrection FS.31874
A Better Resurrection FS.31874

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
A Better Resurrection, 2013
Oil on linen
34 x 20 inches
86.4 x 50.8 centimeters
CR# FS.31874

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Credo FS.34701

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
Credo, 2015
Oil on linen
72 x 88 inches
182.9 x 223.5 centimeters
CR# FS.34701

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A Different Wealth FS.4494
A Different Wealth FS.4494

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
A Different Wealth, 2000
Oil on linen
47 1/4 x 41 1/4 inches
120 x 104.8  centimeters
CR# FS.4494

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Sharps and Flats FS.37881

Louise Fishman (1939 - 2021)
Sharps and Flats, 2017
Oil on linen
70 x 90 inches
177.8 x 228.6 centimeters
CR# FS.37881

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