The Hebrew Home for the Aged at Riverdale is pleased to announce the exhibition “Barbara Schwartz: Shaped Paintings (1998–2004).” Barbara Schwartz, a well-established, mid-career painter has been working abstractly for over twenty-five years. This exhibition presents her paintings on panel, ceramic tiles created in Italy, as well as the three dimensional sculptural wall installations, in painted, anodized aluminum. With intense shapes and brave colors, she brings all of her materials out of the realm of the decorative, creating work that is both edgy and mature.

Schwartz’s aesthetic grows out of the modernist tradition and builds upon that very tradition; her strangely gorgeous color combinations and shaped but mysterious forms speak to both the past and future of abstract art. Viewing Schwartz’s paintings, one is often struck with the dangerous impulse to literally pluck sections off the wall. Intimate, yet austerely powerful, her pieces marry a fierce use of color with an airy and palpable defiance of gravity and planar two-dimensionality.

Ovals, rectangles, hexagons, and cone shapes fill the space. The exhibition traces Schwartz’s masterful handling of shape, form, and color. The show opens Sunday, May 16, 2004 with a reception from 3-5 in the afternoon, and will be on view through June 30, 2004. It will be on view in the Elma & Milton A. Gilbert Pavilion, where it is open to the public, daily from 10 am – 4 pm, free of charge.