ROBERT MOSKOWITZ | UNTITLED

Elrick-Manley Fine Art Inc, New York

Private Collection, New Jersey

Barbara Mathes Gallery, New York

Ned Rifkin, Robert Moskowitz, New York 1989, p. 19, illustrated

“Having been included in William C. Seitz’s Museum of Modern Art exhibition “The Art of Assemblage” in 1961, and with a solo debut at the Leo Castelli Gallery the following year, Robert Moskowitz maintained a quiet but persistent presence on the New York scene for more than half a century. Quiet persistence has been a characteristic quality of his art as much as of his career… Observers have always struggled to pigeonhole Moskowitz’s work or to sort out its affinities and affiliations. Early on, he was seen as a fellow traveler of Pop; later, as the godfather of the New Image painting of the late 1970s (Susan Rothenberg, Lois Lane, Joe Zucker et al.). Today, I’d think of Ellsworth Kelly as a close relation. But mainly Moskowitz just seems to have gone his own way, somehow imbibing various influences and influencing others in turn while following his own path. Among the first works he showed were collages made of window shades; since then, while eventually eschewing the use of found objects, he has continued to be fascinated by the visual form of quotidian things—and particularly things that are part of the built environment. At the same time, he has usually depicted those things—if depicted is even the right word—with the eye of an abstractionist, even a kind of small-m minimalist, a parer-down rather than an elaborator. The fewer forms and the fewer colors his paintings employ, the more it seems he can do with them.”

(Barry Schwabsky, “Robert Moskowitz”, Artforum, January 2018, Vol. 56, No. 5)

View Ned Rifkin’s monograph on Robert Moskowitz here: https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_2113_300062966.pdf