Hauser & Wirth announced on May 20th that it will represent the estate of American artist Susan Rothenberg, who passed away in 2020 at age 75. Next month, the gallery will feature Rothenberg’s work in its Art Basel presentation. In September, it will mount a solo exhibition of the artist’s work in New York.
Rothenberg is perhaps best known for her large-scale horse paintings produced in the 1970s, which marked a bold return to figurative painting at a time when New York’s art scene was dominated by Minimalism and Conceptual art. Her work combined gestural abstraction with symbolic representation, capturing movement and psychological intensity through vivid color fields, fragmented body parts, and, of course, horses. She also became known for declining to participate in group shows where she would be the only woman artist.
“In declaring a resolute commitment to painting in the 1970s, when the medium had been virtually left for dead and women artists were largely relegated to a lower rank, Susan Rothenberg claimed her place,” said Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot in a press statement. “But from there, she continued to build her powers and assert a completely independent vision, building a remarkable practice over decades on her own terms. Rothenberg’s mastery, and her ability to navigate the tensions between the literal and the transcendental, make her one of the undeniable greats of her generation—a radical talent.”
Born in Buffalo, New York in 1945, Rothenberg received a BFA from Cornell University in 1967. After briefly attending the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., she moved to New York in 1969, where she stayed for two decades. There, she quickly immersed herself in the downtown New York art scene, at one point assisting sculptor Nancy Graves. Her first solo exhibition was held in 1975 at the alternative venue 112 Greene Street in SoHo, where she showed three large-scale acrylic horse paintings.
In 1980, Rothenberg was one of the artists who represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. At this time, she was gradually moving away from acrylic paint to oil painting, while incorporating disembodied body parts alongside human figures or animals. In 1990, after marrying American artist Bruce Nauman, she moved to a ranch in New Mexico. There, her work began to reflect the desert landscape.
During her lifetime, Rothenberg was the subject of just two major survey exhibitions: at Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery in 1992 and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2009. Her work is held in prestigious collections at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Tate, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.
Prior to Hauser & Wirth’s announcement, Rothenberg’s work had already gained market attention. Last fall, the artist’s 1976 painting United States II set her auction record when it sold for $1.98 million at Christie’s in New York. Her previous record was set by Diagonal (1975), which sold for $1.49 million at Christie’s in 2007.
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