Ethel Schwabacher: Woman in Nature

Excerpt from Ethel Schwabacher: Woman in Nature

By Joan M. Marter

 

After her marriage in 1935 to Wolfgang Schwabacher, a lawyer, the couple had two children, Brenda (b. 1936), and Christopher (b. 1941). Her husband set up a studio for her in Pennington, New Jersey, where the family had a farmhouse. 

 

The sudden death of Schwabacher’s husband in 1951 turned the artist in a new direction for her work. Just at the time that women artists were becoming identified with Abstract Expressionism and participating in group exhibitions, Schwabacher rearranged her apartment to create a larger studio. There she produced a constant stream of paintings dealing with themes of maternity, creativity, and the forces of nature. In addition to her abiding interest in the miracles of the natural world, she incorporated mythological themes for deep psychological explorations of the self. She attempted to consider her subconscious and joined automatism with abstract forms related to nature.

 

Ethel Schwabacher’s trajectory as a renowned artist of the twentieth century follows an extraordinary course. She can be separated from many women artists of the 1950s because of her yearly invitation to the Whitney Museum Annual Exhibitions, and her participation in other exhibitions of

contemporary painting. Schwabacher was also included in the Nature in Abstraction exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1958.