Rosemarie Beck

 

Rosemarie Beck (1923–2003) emerged from the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, though her tenure as an abstract painter was brief. By 1958, she had moved completely away from non-objective painting into figuration, a decision that would alter the course of her career."Rosemarie Beck’s work was first and foremost formal. Always forming, constantly composing, she respected the whole.  Every stroke or spot changed and challenged what had gone before. Choosing as themes the great classical narratives, she remade them as contemporary dramas of color and light." /Martha Hayden, The Rosemarie Beck Foundation/'Beck's determination to keep "everything moving to and through everything" enabled her to orchestrate large and spatially complex compositions while keeping a vitality of stroke and play of light rippling over the entire surface. In this way she has become one of the few painters of recent years to treat grand themes in ambitious multi-figure compositions while satisfying a need both for abstract structure and for an execution that embodies energy without being gratuitous."/Martica Sawin in "Never Form, But Forming" (2001) /rosemariebeck.org/