Rosemarie Castoro

Life and work

Rosemarie Castoro (1939-2015) was an American artist who worked in drawing, painting, sculpture, and other mediums. She was associated with Minimalism, Conceptual art, and concrete poetry. Castoro was a pioneer of monochrome painting and abstraction. Movement of the human body through physical space was a recurring theme in her work. In the 1960s, she participated in several performances with Minimal Dance pioneer Yvonne Rainer and became involved with the study of choreography at the Pratt Institute. Castoro graduated from the Pratt Institute, Cum Laude, with a BFA in 1963. In the 1970s, Castoro developed a strong focus on sculpture. In 1971 she created a series of giant minimal sculptures called Free Standing Wall Pieces which encouraged performative interaction. The surfaces of the panels are treated with graphite, gesso and marble dust, thickly applied creating massive rough brush strokes. According to a statement made by her gallery representative, “she was acutely aware that women artists working in a formalist style milieu were not spared the gender-based dismissal of the time,” even while she remained “strictly dedicated to her non-representational abstract style of work.”

Collections

Museum of Modern Art, New York; Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey; University Art Museum, Berkeley; Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; Collection U.S. Embassy; Goldman Sachs; Bank of America; J.P. Morgan

Grants

Guggenheim Fellowship, 1971; New York State Council on the Arts 1972, 1973; National Endowment for the Arts, 1975, 1985; Tiffany Foundation, 1977; Pollock-Krasner Foundation, 1989, 1998