Ethel Fisher: Synthesis of Form and Color
In the dazzling abstract paintings that comprise the exhibition of works by Ethel Fisher (1923-2017), entitled “Synthesis of Form and Color,” the artist demonstrates her remarkable facility for creating imagery that integrates aspects of Cubism, Modernism, and Abstract Expressionism through a personal expressiveness and unique vision.
Fisher became a recognizable figure in the art world after her studies with prestigious instructors in San Francisco and St. Louis, culminating at the New York Art Students League in the 1940s. Early in her career, she had solo shows at an array of galleries and museums including New York’s Riverside Museum, Norton Museum of Art (Florida), and The National Museum of Fine Arts (Havana), along with galleries in both New York City and San Francisco. Fisher contributed to group shows at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Ringling Museum of Art, and nationally touring shows with the Ford Foundation and the de Young Museum.
Fisher’s work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jewish Museum (NYC), Art Students League, Museum of the City of New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Crocker Art Museum, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), Oklahoma State Museum of Art, Norton Museum of Art, Lowe Gallery (University of Miami), Vanderbilt University, and scores of other public and private art collections. Fisher's personal papers are in the collections of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art in New York and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC.
Evocative of mysterious and often interlocking forms from the natural world, Fisher’s abstract paintings possess geometric structures composed in spontaneous shape arrangements – resulting in engaging and exciting constellations of post-Cubistic semiology. Fisher strived in innovative ways to create works that convey vibrant energy and movement through form, space, and color. She deemed her unique approach, “Abstract Impressionism,” a term she had the audacity to coin in the art world and apply to her own work with the kind of resilient brazenness that can be traced across her seven-decade career.
Indeed, she distinguished her mode of working by recounting in a 2015 interview that “I was more interested in solving certain problems in paintings, and Abstract Expressionism was…a very free style of work with the brush.” Fisher believed that her art-making should be leavened by rationality and what she called “a grinding for a new and personal order.”
At the heart of Fisher’s practice during this formative period was her deeply held idea that “painting is primarily color – just as the primary factor in music is sound – and color is charged with a psychological evocative power which associates with one’s own experiences with nature.” The works of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky provided early inspiration. In Green and Blue Composition (1957), for example, one can see a similar sense of playfulness of the sort Klee is known for. Pablo Picasso was also an influence, as were other exponents of Cubism, and this influence is evident in Spoon (1947). Certain of her works might recall the austere geometries Essay continues on page 8
Green and Blue Composition, 1957
Oil on linen, 54 x 44 inches
Spoon, 1947
Oil on canvas, 24 x 18 inches
Ethel Fisher: Synthesis of Form and Color
of Russian Constructivism, though Fisher is quick to point out that her works lacked the strictly formal approach of that movement.
Creating her own personal set of symbols and forms to create a new pictorial language, Fisher often incorporated hieroglyphic-like images into her paintings that are enlivened by the vibrant colors with which she inscribes them. Indeed, she adeptly transformed such diverse multi-cultural vocabularies as architectural elements, Persian art, Inuit sculpture, Kachina dolls, and archaeological antiquities, such as pre-Columbian artifacts, into new visual phrases through her skillful brushstrokes. Her historical influences, however, can also be sourced to early Christian and Byzantine art – from the Ravenna mosaics of the 5th and 6th centuries to the Sienese painters of the late Medieval period. These diverse sources became a wellspring of her inspiration.
The Constellation (1957), for example, contemplates the starry night sky as it is transformed into deep purple. The large, tilting planetary ring in the middle of the canvas describes the path of distant moons, its radiant arc as celestial as a saint’s halo. By closely examining Medieval art, Fisher would find fascinating shapes and adjust, alter, and utilize them in such a way that their original meaning might have been lost, but their timeless forms found intriguing new contexts.
Despite the teasing hints from her titles, Fisher’s work is unmistakably nonrepresentational, and yet her lush organic forms and soft colors connect them back to the physical world of the artist’s experience. With brio, she consistently flouted the lines between figurative and abstract, biographical and universal.
Fisher’s unique approach in offering a counterpoint to the philosophies of Abstract Expressionism has been deservedly recognized for its highly personal, intimate abstraction. To savvy connoisseurs in mid-century America’s contemporary art scene, Fisher was a boldfaced name in the burgeoning field of postwar abstraction as a result of her unique ideas and engaging works. Interestingly, this phase of her career was centered in Miami rather than New York where she exhibited regularly at galleries such as Eddie Mirell and others. Lowe Gallery at the University of Miami was also a frequent venue for her work; Fisher participated in their sponsored annual shows. She was active in the Miami art scene and was appointed by Florida’s governor as President of the Artists Equity Association.
A landmark solo artist exhibition at Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Palacio de Bellas
Artes in Havana, Cuba in 1957 proved an early milestone and high point for her career. Fellow artists, friends, and critics flew into Cuba from Miami to see her show, and Fisher’s work left a deep impression on the critics in Havana. “Within this graceful beauty, witness how a dark theme assumes light, and how sacred
Essay continues on page 12
The Constellation, 1957 Oil on canvas, 49 x 58 inches
Ethel Fisher: Synthesis of Form and Color
solemnity explodes into movement,” Rafael Marquina wrote of Fisher’s paintings in La Informacíon. “Her work is characterized by a great mastery in the disposition of planes and in the employment of color. And also, by a very special grace of composition where, more intellectually and formally, she builds geometric forms in balanced assembly into a perfect whole,” Adele Jaume praised Fisher in Diario de la Marina. Even (Fulgencio) Batista, president of Cuba, attended the exhibition. The show was a huge success and at the time had a great impact on painters in both regions exploring abstraction.
In later years, Fisher’s work ranged across other genres including grid-like architectural facades, figurative portraiture (especially of fellow artists from the ‘60s and ‘70s) and landscapes, all unified by a continuous emphasis on color and space originating from the time of her abstract paintings. Her noted teacher and life-long friend, the famed New York painter Will Barnet (1911-2012) summarized her abstract works well, though the comment could apply also to her other periods, by writing: “Dynamic movements vitalized her forms and make her paintings flow from area to area until the surface is brimming with life. But beneath this dynamic flow is a basic structure and contains the movement and gives meaning to her form.”
Catalog from Ethel Fisher's solo exhibition at Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Palacio de Bellas Artes in Havana, Cuba, 1957
Composition #1 (The Shelter), 1957 Oil on canvas, 26 x 36 inches
Grey Façade, 1957
Oil on linen, 20 x 30 inches
The Trove #4, 1957
Oil on linen, 38 x 50 inches
Hieratic Painting, 1957 Oil on canvas, 30 x 57.75 inches
Garden Wall #43, 1958
Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 inches
Marrakesh, 1957
Oil on linen, 30 x 40 inches
Carnival, 1954
Oil on canvas, 18 x 30 inches
Interior #12, 1956
Oil on canvas, 34 x 26 inches
Totem #12, 1956
Oil on masonite, 60 x 20 inches
Façade, 1955
Oil on masonite, 48 x 23.75 inches
Composition, 1951
Oil on linen, 32 x 41.75 inches
Burnt Offering, 1959
Oil on linen, 55 x 46 inches
Torrid Zone, 1959
Oil on canvas, 36 x 50 inches
Parade, 1959
Oil on canvas, 46.75 x 53 inches
Untitled, 1957
Oil on canvas, 36 x 32 inches
Ethel Fisher (1923–2017)
EDUCATION
University of Houston
The University of Texas, Austin, with Everett Spruce, Howard Cook, and William McVey
Washington University, St. Louis, with Fred Conway
The Art Students League of New York, with Morris Kantor, Robert Beverly Hale, and Will Barnet
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024 Portraits of the Sublime, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
1986 The Michael Ivey Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1975 “Ethel Fisher Recent Paintings,” Mitzi Landau Twentieth Century Art, Los Angeles, CA
1961 “Paintings & Collages by Ethel Fisher,” Edward Dean Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1960 Angeleski Gallery, New York, NY
1958 The Riverside Museum, New York, NY
1958 The Gallery, Miami, FL
1958 Washington Federal Art Exhibit, Miami Beach, FL
1957 Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba
1954 Joe and Emily Lowe Gallery, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL
1954 Mirell Gallery, Coconut Grove, FL
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024 Women and Construction, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, Art Students League, New York, NY
2024 Recent Acquisitions, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, Art Students League, New York, NY
2023 First Look: New to the Museum, Oklahoma Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, OK
2022 Personas: Artists on Artists, The Jewish Museum, New York City, NY
2003 Face to Face: Portraits, Herman & Marjorie Platt Gallery, University of Judaism, Los Angeles, CA
2000 Revealing and Concealing, Portraits, Skirball Cultural Center and Museum, Los Angeles, CA
1999 Art Trends 1940s - 1960s, Kendall Campus Art Gallery, Miami, FL
1998 Venice Art Walk, Exhibit, Venice, CA
1997 Group Show, Paintings, Hooks Epstein Gallery, Houston, TX
1986 Contemporary Artists Presently Working in California, Michael Ivey Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1985 AG Nature, Visuals for Performance Art by MAFISHCO, Dance Theater Workshop, New York, NY
1983 Facings, Downey Museum, Downey, CA
1979 Portraits/1979, Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1978 Déjá vu, Masterpieces Updated, Downey Museum, Downey, CA
1977 Shades of Grey, Drawing Survey, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA
1977 Cityscapes, San Francisco Museum Association, San Francisco, CA
1977 California Figurative Painters, Tortue Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1976 West Side Story, Tortue Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1976 Video Interviews, Ron Feldman Gallery, New York, NY
1976 Hansen Fuller Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1976 Broxton Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1975 Current Concerns II, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA
1974 Painting, Color, Form and Surface, Lang Gallery, Scripps College, Claremont, CA
1973 Women Choose Women, New York Cultural Center, New York, NY
1972 Small Images Exhibit, California State University, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
1971 Figurative Show, Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, CA
1971 American Portraits – Old and New – Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA
1970 Second Annual Art Exhibition, Santa Barbara Art Museum, Santa Barbara, CA
1968 The 164th Annual Exhibition, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA
1968 Fourth Annual Juried Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, Westchester Art Society, Westchester, NY
1968 Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1968 Waddell Gallery, New York, NY
1967
The Silvermine Annual New England Exhibit, Silvermine Arts Center, New Cannan, CT
1967 The Contained Object, Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Ethel Fisher (1923–2017)
1967 Eugenia Butler Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1967 Artists by Artists, Capricorn Gallery, New York, NY
1965 Tavoletta (Table Size Paintings) Show, Castagno Gallery, New York, NY
1965 A.M. Sachs Gallery, New York City, NY
1962 Recent Acquisitions, Lowe Art Gallery, Miami Beach, FL
1962 Miami Artists, Design Center, Miami, FL
1961 Paintings and Collages by Ethel Fisher, Edward Dean Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1961 Cubism Now and Expressionism in the West, Ford Foundation and Stanford University, San Francisco, CA
1961 Artists from Miami, Fine Arts Museum, Springfield, MA
1960 The Boston Arts Festival, Boston, MA
1960 The Artist Interprets the Figure, Natalie Baskin Gallery, Coconut Grove, FL
1960 Survey Show, The Museum of Modern Art (art rental), New York, NY
1960 Riverside Museum, New York, NY
1960 Miami Artists Assocation, Gallery Restaurant, Coral Gables, FL
1960 Hortt Memorial Exhibition, Fort Lauderdale Art Center, Fort Lauderdale, FL
1960 The Playhouse Gallery, Coconut Grove, FL
1960 Contemporary Arts Gallery, Pinellas Park, FL
1960 The Artist Interprets the Figure, Natalie Baskin Gallery, Coconut Grove, FL
1960 Staempfli Gallery, New York, NY
1960 The Gallery, Miami, FL
1959 Tenth Annual Exhibition of the Florida Artist Group, Inc. : 1959-1960, Playhouse Gallery, Coconut Grove, FL
1959 Religious Paintings by Miami Artists, Rudolph Galleries, Coral Gables, FL
1959 21st Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL
1958 20th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL
1958 Three Younger Miami Painters, Norton Gallery, West Palm Beach, FL
1958 Friday Night Sketch Group [Member's Exhibition], Lowe Gallery, Coconut Grove, FL
1958 Six Miami Painters, The Little Gallery, Lewis State Bank, Tallahassee, FL
1958 Nine from Miami, Riverside Museum, New York, NY
1958 Art USA, 1958, Madison Square Garden, New York City, NY
1958 Studio Craft Shop, Coconut Grove, FL
1958 20th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting, Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL
1958 Gallery Restaurant, Coral Gables, FL
1957 Three Younger Miami Painters, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
1957 Four Arts Society, Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL
1957 7th National [Sarasota Art Association exhibition], The Ringling Museum, Sarasota, FL
1957 Recorder Workshop, Coconut Grove, FL
1956 Miami Artists Association, Studio Craft Shop, Miami, FL
1956 The Lyceum, Esposición Colectiva de pintura Norteamericana, The Lyceum, Habana, Cuba
1956 Miami Artists Association, Washington Art Galleries, Miami Beach, FL
1956 Miami Artists Assocation, Lowe Gallery, Coconut Grove, FL
1956 Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.
1955 Prints by Local Artists, Mirell Gallery, Coconut Grove, FL
1955 Miami Artists Association, Sarasota Art Association Gallery; Norton Gallery, West Palm Beach, FL
1955 Four Arts Society, Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL
1955 Florida Artist Group Exhibition, Norton Gallery, West Palm Beach, FL
1955 Mirell Gallery, Coconut Grove, FL
1954 Annual Award Winners, Joe and Emily Lowe Gallery, University of Miami, Coconut Grove, FL
1954 Eve Tucker Galleries, Miami Beach, FL
1954 Mirell Gallery, Coconut Grove, FL
1953 Joe and Emily Lowe Gallery, University of Miami, Coconut Grove, FL
1945 The Philadelphia Print Club, The Philadelphia Print Club, Philadelphia, PA
1945 Artists under 25, Jacques Seligmann Gallery, New York and Bennington College, VT
Ethel Fisher (1923–2017)
AWARDS
1965 The Tiffany Award for Painting, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, NY
1963 The Kulicke Award, Westchester Art Association, White Plains, NY
1960 The Four Arts Award, Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL
1959 The Four Arts Award, Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, FL
1957 Harry Rich Exposition, painting award, Miami
1953 Lowe Gallery, first prize in painting, Miami
MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Art Students League - Permanent Collection, New York, NY
Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York, NY
Crocker Museum, Sacramento, CA
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX
Fairfield University Art Museum, Fairfield, CT
Jewish Museum, New York, NY
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Martha Alf Foundation, Los Angeles, CA
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Ethel Fisher in her Miami Studio with unfinished Garden Wall #43, 1958