Judith Rothschild

Judith Rothschild
b. 1921, New York, New York
d. 1993, New York, New York

Judith Rothschild was an American abstract painter and philanthropist. Rothschild graduated from Wellesley College in 1943 and went on to study with Reignald Marsh at the Art Students League, William Stanley Hayter at his Atelier 17, Hans Hofmann in New York, and Karl Knaths in Provincetown. In 1945, Rothschild joined the Jane Street Gallery, an artist cooperative that promoted pure abstraction and rejected Social Realism. During this period, Rothschild produced flat, Cubist-inspired abstractions that emphasized unconventional color combinations. She held her first one person show at Jane Street, which provided her entrance into the American Abstract Artists group. Rothschild was an active member of the arts community throughout her lifetime, at different points serving as the president of the American Abstract Artists, an editor of Leonardo magazine, a trustee of the American Federation of the Arts, and founding member of the Long Point Gallery in Provincetown. In the 1970s, Rothschild cultivated an artistic practice centered around analogies between colors and music, evoking melodic harmony and dissonance through various color combinations. In her will, she established The Judith Rothschild Foundation with the purpose of using her collection of artworks, by masters like Matisse and Mondrian, to promote underappreciated artists.