Rosemarie Castoro

Rosemarie Castoro (born in Brooklyn, New York, United States; 1939 – 2015) was an American artist associated with the New York Minimalists. She worked in drawing, painting, sculpture, and other media. She was associated with Minimalism, Conceptual art, and concrete poetry.

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. 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.

Rosemarie Castoro at Artpark Castoro's work, Flashers, is featured in the 1979 poster of Artpark under the title, "Public Sculpture for the Post-Heroic Age". Artpark features sculptural, performance art, and public art. Castoro made these sculptures— seven-foot-tall figurative black forms of galvanized sheet metal—for Artpark. In this exhibition, on view in New York from May 13–November 13, 1983, Castoro provided a voice for figurative art and a medium for its exploration. Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou, 2021. Carving Space, Mostyn, Llandudno, North Wales, UK, 21 October 2023 – 24 February 2024. A retrospective. Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection, 2024.

Collections Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). Museum of Modern Art, New York Collection U.S. Embassy Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

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