Stephen Rosenthal1975

"Stephen Rosenthal's paintings are so unusual that one is almost inevitably led to wonder about how they come into being. How and why does this or that maculation occur at just this or that place on the rectangle of the canvas, or in the space of the painting--keeping in mind that the canvas and the painting are not exactly the same thing? [. . .] Rosenthal's process involves both adding and taking away, which means using both paint and solvents. The taking away, the via di levare that Michelangelo considered the sculptor's method, is more important, more determinative of the final result." --Barry Schwabsky Stephen Rosenthal, already active in New York in the latter half of the 1960s, delved from the outset into an investigation of reduction in painting via works on unstretched canvas,...