Barbara Grossman: A Survey

Wright State University is pleased to be the inaugural space for a major traveling show of paintings and drawings by New York artist Barbara Grossman. The show will encompass thirty years of work and will travel to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Easton, Pennsylvania, and New York City.

Barbara Grossman's paintings are about figures in interiors—women—reading, singing, playing the piano or dancing. They are completely invented. Her color is characteristically bright and luminous. Her figures create their own space and are defined by it. The space of the painting folds, unbends and presses the experience of seeing, so that seeing happens in a new way. The paintings are oil on linen. The oil pastels are of the same subject matter, however, they are not studies for the paintings, but entities themselves.

Lawrence Campbell, in a review of Grossmna's work in Art in America wrote: "...she invites the sound of music and the intimate poetry of the scene...for all is color and light."

And in a review in The New York Times of the Annual Juried Exhibition at the National Academy, in 1994, Roberta Smith cited Grossman's work as painting "in which representation tends towards the Impressionistic and semi-abstract...Barbara Grossman's stand(s) out, in part for simply giving the imperatives of painting decisive precedent over those of description."

About the artist

Grossman received her BFA from Cooper Union and later worked as a Fulbright Scholar at the Academie der Kunst in Munich, Germany. A founding member of the Bowery Gallery in New York City, she has exhibited her work nationally for more than twenty-five years. In 1995, and again in 2000, Grossman received the National Academy of Design Award for Painting. Her work, included in many private collections, may also be seen in such prestigious institutions as the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the National Academy Museum in New York City.

Artist statement

The interaction of color and space is my subject. The paintings, oil pastels and monoprints are about figures in interiors. The figures create their own space and are defined by it. The color both participates in this as well as generates it. It is characteristically bright and luminous.