Sylvia Carewe, Large Colorful Modernist Pastel Abstract Expressionist Painting Sylvia Carewe

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Framed 33 X 45.5 image is 29 X 41.5 Hand signed lower left Signed and titled verso Sylvia Carewe (1906-1981) … Read more Framed 33 X 45.5 image is 29 X 41.5 Hand signed lower left Signed and titled verso Sylvia Carewe (1906-1981) was an American woman artist, painter, writer and poet. Born in New York City to Russian immigrant parents, Louis and Esther Kerewsky, she changed her surname to "Carewe" in 1930. Carewe attended Columbia University and studied further with Yasuo Kuniyoshi at Atelier 17 in New York, with Hans Hoffman in New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts, and at the New School for Social Research. During World War II Carewe worked as an advertising copywriter and artist for agencies in New York. She became a prolific abstract artist in a range of media, including tapestry designs for the Aubusson tapestry carpet company in France, felt banners, collage reliefs, and what she termed "blown paintings," which were assemblages (predominantly of children's toy components) overlaid with spray paint. One of the most common subjects in her semi abstract paintings was New York City at night. She also worked in traditional artistic media, including watercolors, oils, lithographs and pastels. In October 1944, she married Marvin Small (formerly Smalheiser, executive for Carter's Little Liver Pills). They had one child, John Marvin, in June 1947. Carewe had her first one-woman show in Poughkeepsie in 1947, after which she opened in New York City at the ACA Gallery in 1948. She had some twenty other American solo shows and her works hung in many exhibits across the United States as well as in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Her works are represented in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum, Musée de l'Arte Moderne, Paris, Brandeis University, the Butler Art Institute, Howard University, the Tel Aviv Museum and the National Museum in Djakarta, Indonesia. Her work has been described by French critics as "violent, colorful art, in hard contrasts, not exempt from cold lyricism." ["Les Girls," Time, 11 Nov 1957] Carewe was nearly as productive as a writer, producing both poetry and short stories. She corresponded with Milton Avery, Sally Avery, David Burliuk, Chaim Gross, and Abraham Walkowitz. She was photographed by Arnold Newman. She was a founding member of The American Society of Tapestry Designers. Carewe had three solo exhibitions at ACA Gallery (1948, 1950, 1953), the first as a result of winning an annual competition. During these early years, her paintings were very boldly colored, figurative abstractions executed in a primitive style, which mostly captured the locales from her frequent travels. Carewe was largely self-taught and had brief instruction with Hans Hofmann and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Between January 1953 and May 1954, she worked at Atelier 17 and made several etchings, which she showed at The Three Arts in March 1954. Dorothy Dehner and Irene Rice Pereira were close friends of Carewe’s at this time, and it is possible that one of them may have introduced her to Atelier 17 (Stanley William Hayter). Two rare impressions of Carewe’s early etchings, likely created at Atelier 17, evidence her experimentation with printmaking techniques. In the first, Ebb and Flow (1953), Carewe dribbled stop-out varnish abstractly onto the plate and completed it by etching a spiral design into the white circle and lines into the crescent shape. This work was a forerunner to a tapestry design, La Firmament, that Carewe would create in the late 1950s and early 1960s with Braquenie & Cie, the renown weaver in Aubusson, France. The second, At Anchor (1954), features a very primitive, nocturnal composition of several boats and buoys rocking on the waves—a frequent motif of Carewe’s work through several media. Carewe continued to create prints through the late 1950s, expanding the complexity of her designs and also trying her hand at lithograph printing, though she turned her focus increasingly to nocturnal paintings and drawings of city lights, and, more importantly, tapestry design. Encouraged by Katia Granoff, who represented the artist’s work in Paris, Carewe was one of the earliest modern artists—and one of the first women—to adopt the historic art form, a precursor to the explosion of modern tapestry manufacture during the 1960s and 1970s. She worked under the sponsorship of the French cultural attaché and created original cartons for her tapestry designs, which were produced with Braquenié & Cie. Represented by French & Company in New York, Carewe’s tapestries were well received, and JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy purchased one for their apartment at the Carlyle Hotel. She was included in the seminal 1973 exhibition "Women choose Women" along Pat Adams, Pearl Amsel, Heléne Aylon, Alice Baber, Nell Blaine, Vija Celmins, Perle Fine, Audrey Flack, Mary Frank, Sonia Gechtoff, Dorothy Gillespie, Yvonne Jacquette, Buffie Johnson, Joyce Kozloff, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Betty Parsons, Faith Ringgold, Joan Snyder, Nancy Spero and Pat Steir. In addition to the visual arts, Carewe was a prolific poet and writer of short stories. Her work was collected by Charles and Ray Eames and is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Whitney Museum, and she received several awards from the French Government. See less