Rosalind Bengelsdorf

Art Brokerage: Rosalind Bengelsdorf American Artist: b. 1916-1979. One of the youngest members of the American Abstract Artists, Rosalind Bengelsdorf championed abstraction in her writings and lectures as well as in her paintings. As a teenager, she studied at the Art Students League (1930 – 34) with John Steuart Curry, Raphael Soyer, Anne Goldthwaite, and George Bridgman, and then for a year at the Annot School. In 1935, she entered Hans Hofmann's atelier as one of the many scholarship students he took on. The following year, she joined the abstract artists working on WPA murals under Burgoyne Diller's enlightened leadership. In Hans Hofmann, Bengelsdorf found a true mentor. His dedication to the painting as an independent object matched her growing belief that the picture plane was a ​"living reality" of forms, energies, and colors. Like Hofmann, Bengelsdorf believed that ​"the shapes that compose the picture belong to nothing else but the picture." She had begun to analyze objects in terms of geometric form under George Bridgman at the league and subsequently at Annot. In a high school chemistry class, Bengelsdorf became fascinated with the idea that space is filled with ​"myriad, infinitesimal subdivisions." She saw ​"the universe as a charged miracle, a vibrating orchestration of the continuous interplay of all forms of matter." Under Hofmann, who emphasized the interrelationship of objects and the environments they occupy, these impulses merged. For Bengelsdorf, the artist's task became the description of ​"not only what he sees but also what he knows of the natural internal function" of objects and the ​"laws of energy that govern all matter: the opposition, tension, interrelation, combination and destruction of planes in space.. This meant that the abstract painter was studying the laws of nature, tearing it apart and then reorganizing the parts into a new creation. Despite this emphasis on formalism, Bengelsdorf also believed that abstract art played a larger function within society. She separated artistic concerns from economic ones and championed art's potential for increasing knowledge and understanding. Listings wanted.