Rosemarie Beck: Letters to a Young Painter and Other Writings

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. In addition to her five decades of visual work, Beck left behind volumes of letters, journals, and essays on art--ranging from formal analysis of the canon, her own work, and the works of her peers to Letters to a Young Painter, an epistolary lecture project. In the writings gathered here, Beck approaches her subjects in the same manner as she would have approached a complex narrative painting: through a richly textured combination of literary allusion, metaphor, direct observation, and autobiography. Rosemarie Beck: Letters to a Young Painter and Other Writings brings together a selection of Beck's writings for the first time, situating her distinctive voice within the milieu of mid-century artist-writers.