Susan Rothenberg

In 1970s New York, Susan Rothenberg emerged as a pivotal figure in the revival of figurative painting after years dominated by Minimalism and Conceptualism. Her raw, pared-down depictions of horses—at once iconic and enigmatic—reintroduced the body and gesture into contemporary painting with striking force. Over time, her imagery expanded to include heads, hands, bones, dogs, and dancers, rendered through an intuitive process marked by muddied, earthy palettes and dense, gestural brushwork.Rothenberg’s paintings suggest affinities with the existential forms of Alberto Giacometti, the late, confrontational works of Philip Guston, and the austere power of ancient cave painting. Her work has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Kunsthalle Basel, the Stedelijk Museum, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Highly regarded on the secondary market, her paintings have achieved seven-figure prices at auction and are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and Tate. Rothenberg was married to Conceptual artist Bruce Nauman from 1989 until her death in 2020.