Skip to content
紐約 | Chelsea

Susan Weil

Now and Then; A Retrospective

April 20 – May 20, 2006

Susan Weil,  Ziggurat , 1986, Acrylic on canvas, 61 x 78"
Susan Weil, Peripheries I, 2004, Acrylic on wood, 48 x 74"
Susan Weil,  Munich (Study) , 1988, Acrylic on paper, 67 x 67"
Susan Weil, Trisha Dancing, 2001, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 85"
Susan Weil, Ampersand, 1985, Acrylic on canvas, 42.5 x 22.5"
Susan Weil, Revelations, 1982, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 42"
Susan Weil, Wooden Tree, 2005, Wood veneer on wood, 56 x 70"
Susan Weil, Year of the Tree, 2005, Acrylic on canvas on wood, 87 x 79"
Susan Weil, Blue Chairs, 1997, Acrylic on aluminum, 72.5 x 55"
Susan Weil, Munich Birds, 1988-1999, Acrylic on paper, 96 x 170"
Susan Weil,  Plexi Tree , 2005, Acrylic on canvas and wood, 87 x 79"
Susan Weil, Gesture, 1983, Acrylic on paper, 28 x 54 x 17"
Susan Weil, Joyce Reflects, 2002, Acrylic on triangular wood solid, 10 x 14 x 7"
Susan Weil, Stephen,  2003, Acrylic on triangular wood solid, 10 x 14 x 7"
Susan Weil, Line Up, 2003, Acrylic on wood cube, 10 x 10 x 10"
Susan Weil, Dawn, 2002-2003, Oil on linen, 8 x 8 x 1.5"
Susan Weil, Wandering Rocks II, 2003, Collage and acrylic on canvases and paper, 56 x 71 x 4"
Susan Weil, Memoremem, 2005, Acrylic on panel and collage elements, 66 x 62"
Susan Weil, Soft Landscape, 1972, Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 9"
Susan Weil, Swimmers, 2000, Acrylic on foamcore, 38 x 95"
Susan Weil,  Peripheries II , 2004, Acrylic on board, 48 x 118"
Susan Weil,  Half Moon , 1990, Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 23"
Susan Weil,  Phases of the Moon , 1980, Acrylic on canvas, 87 x 170"
Susan Weil, Interior , 2000, Acrylic and paper, 60 x 66"
Susan Weil, Color Configurations (yellow), 2000, Acrylic on paper, 60 x 66"
Susan Weil,  Plexi Figure , 1967, Plexiglass, 44 x 25"

Press Release

Behind every successful man, as the old saying goes, is a good woman. And, in many instances, a talented and under-appreciated one, as well. Nowhere has this imbalance been more pronounced than in the art world. Consider the painting, sculpture and photography produced in America since the end of World War II. Clearly, it is the male artists who have been lionized for posterity. First, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollack, Franz Kline and Willem De Kooning. Then, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly and Roy Lichtenstein; and finally, Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe. Few, if any, female artists have managed to garner comparable acclaim or recognition. But things are about to change. One of the boldest and most innovative of all contemporary female artists–Susan Weil–is about to receive her due.

For years, Weil was best known for being the ex-wife of that titan of the post-modernist movement, painter-sculptor Robert Rauschenberg. In the late 1940s, at the age of 18, the Manhattan-bred and Dalton-educated Weil went to Paris to study art at the famed Académie Julian. There she met Rauschenberg, who was living in the same rooming house while also studying at the Academie. Together, Weil and Rauschenberg wandered the quaint, cobblestone streets, sketching the churches, the parks and the cafes. They painted together in the drawing room of their pension. They haunted the museums. They later returned to the States to study together at Black Mountain College, the avant-garde mecca for young artists, composers, and choreographers, in the green mountains of rural North Carolina. They became inseparable, and fell in love.

In June of 1950, on an island off Connecticut, Weil and Rauschenberg were married. While the marriage lasted only a few short years, it produced a son, Christopher Rauschenberg, who is now a photographer living on the West Coast. It also led to a deep and enduring friendship, as well as several major artistic collaborations between Weil and Rauschenberg. Most prominent among these were their "blueprint" paintings, a series of feathery and ethereal renderings of human movement – a woman walking, a skirt billowing, fingertips ever-so-gracefully extending. These paintings were produced on actual blueprint paper.

Weil later went on to create a significant body of her own work. But while she broke new and important ground, particularly in her dazzlingly fragmented yet geometrically ordered, grid-like paintings of human motion, Weil–like many other wives and partners of well-known male artists¬–never managed to completely emerge from the shadow of her celebrated ex-husband. This April, Sundaram Tagore Gallery celebrates Susan Weil and her work with her first retrospective exhibition.

回到顶部