Louise Fishman: A Retrospective, on view from April 3 through July 31, 2016 at the Neuberger Museum of Art, features over 50 works, created by the artist from 1968 through 2015. This exhibition traces the course and development of Fishman's career, featuring early hard-edged grid paintings of the late 1960s, feminist-inspired woven-and-stitched works and the explosive "Angry Paintings" of the 1970s, "Remembrance and Renewal" works made in response to a transformative visit to Auschwitz and Terezin in1988, culminating in the calligraphic and gestural abstractions for which she is widely known. Paintings inspired by the artist's residency at the Emily Harvey Foundation in Venice in 2011 and by the work of British artist J.M.W. Turner complete the exhibition.
Throughout it all, Fishman experimented with style and medium, and she varied her approach. Yet, she ultimately remained true to abstraction, employing a thicket of brush strokes that are dynamic, bold, energetic, passionate, and intensely physical, often infused by a spirit of resistance and discontent. "My paintings are very athletic, very musical; they're architectural," the artist recently explained to a visitor to her studio. "Feminism taught me I could do anything." According to Hyperallergic, "Fishman, whose work embraces the Abstract Expressionist tradition but reinvents it, has long fought for the meaningful recognition that Neuberger Museum of Art Chief Curator Helaine Posner believes has eluded many women artists because of sexism and other cultural biases. Posner believes this exhibition reflects Fishman’s finest hour: 'She’s at the top of her game.'"