Stephen RosenthalConstellation

Pier Vittorio Aureli’s selection for his storefront.

I’ve discovered the work of Rosenthal recently and I was impressed by the paintings in this book. I’d describe his work as Cy Twombly-meet-Giorgio Morandi.

“This monograph focuses on the last two cycles of work by the American abstract painter, developed over the last fifteen years: a series of apparently monochrome paintings, in reality pale, discreet and elaborate paintings from which emerge subtle signs, traces and marks, and a series resulting from a long process of preparation, part of the work itself, consisting of slowly erasing, sometimes for several months, all figurative details from the surface of the paintings with solvents and rags.

Stephen Rosenthal (b. 1935, Washington, D.C.), active on the New York art scene since the second half of the 1960s, has explored the reduction and abstraction of painting to the point of obliteration for more than five decades, from research on unframed canvases to the “Microcosms” of the last period.”