Adrianne Rubenstein

Kindly donated by the artist and Broadway, New York

Adrianne Rubenstein 

Written by Sara Harrison for Aspen Art Museum Summer Issue 2022 

Executed in oil, with deliberate, confi-dent strokes, Adrianne Rubenstein's paintings feel relentlessly upbeat. Semi-abstract or semi-figurative, depending on how you look at them, these biograph-ical works-which draw on the artist's memories of childhood and everyday surroundings-pulsate with life. 

The bright, acid tones of some pieces recall the palette of 19th-century French symbolist Odilon Redon, but a stronger connection still is to the early-20th-century German group The Blue Rider, whose members emphasized natural forms and the spiritual/emotive dimension of color. Rubenstein's paintings, in their expressive, vibrant naivety, echo those of key members such as August Macke, Franz Marc and Gabriele Munter. Marc painted Blue Horse in 1911; Rubenstein's painting of the same title followed 110 years later and is typical of her dense composi-tions, with the horse's head battling for attention with daubs of bold color and semi-recognizable forms. 

A quote by Munter, taken from a 1958 interview with Edouard Roditi, feels relevant to Rubenstein's practice: "I think we were all more interested in being honest than in being modern." In turn, Barry Schwabsky, writing about Rubenstein's work in Artforum in 2020, observes: "Rubenstein's droll decompositions of the familiar tran-scend their own whimsy by dint of their commitment to what she calls 'a kernel of truth, honesty and curiosity in my intentions'-that is, to sincerity." 

Born in Montreal in 1983, Rubenstein studied first at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, before completing an MFA at San Francisco Art Institute in 2011. She now lives and works in New York, where she also curates exhibitions by fellow artists.