Sarai Sherman

Sarai Sherman (September 2, 1922 – October 24, 2013) was a Pennsylvania-born Jewish American artist whose work, both in America and Europe shaped international views of women and abstract expressionism. She was a significant twentieth century painter and sculptor known for her abstract paintings, prints and ceramics.

Life and work Sherman was born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1922. She showed an early predisposition towards painting and was enrolled in an arts and graphics program around the age of 10. These early years began to shape her artistic interests in people, nature and the built environment. She attended Kensington High School and continued to explore artistic themes and painting. Sherman studied at the prestigious Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania where she was exposed to seminal works of modern masters and she attended the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, headed at the time by Russian-born artist Boris Blai with faculty including Earl Horter and Honga Holm. Sherman graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Science degree in education and then enrolled into the Master of Arts program at the University of Iowa, graduating with a degree in art history and painting.

Sherman moved to New York City to pursue art. During this period she designed fabrics and wallpaper that were sold though stores in Philadelphia and New York. In a United Press International article published in June 1958 Sherman provided a glimpse into her textile and interior architectural design philosophy: "Designers must have a real sense about people and machines or they'll produce designs which are cultural lags. We must understand the American Women especially, and realize that she is in a state of transition."

During WWII, Sherman lived in Eagle Pass, Texas where her husband was stationed with the 45th Massachusetts Regiment.

Italy, 1952-1954

Sherman was awarded a Fulbright Grant to paint in Italy. There she gained a deep perspective into the poverty of postwar Europe. The experiences touched Sherman and became a turning point in her artistic development. For her, Italy became a platform from where she could look and participate in culture completely. She wrote from Matera in the Spring of 1953 "I feel at home...not because these caves remind me of Philadelphia, but because somehow a passage of light or color, or the motion of an animal, recall to my mind moments of my childhood, distant places. I feel as if it were my former self contemplating this forbidding white region. I see a woman with her child in her arms: His small body is in continuous motion, he looks around, he screams. I see mother and child in the sunlight, and it seems to me that I saw them years before, exhausted, yet beautiful. The old image is superimposed in the new one. The painting process is automatic, spontaneous, it leads me. The finished product is all chrome yellow, with ochre hues hovering between white and ivory. They reveal a sense of the ancient."

Sherman's conceptual ideas that were expressed in her painting were comparisons between reality and reminiscences, a compelling concern with the world of others, with the dejected southern Italian population and an identification of her own origin within that dejection and that poverty. During these years her art proceeded autobiographically, in the sense that, following an irrepressible necessity she identified with the subjects of her paintings. This period is full of symbolic content, the tenderness, the thoughtfulness of her paintings, which often become the moment of completion of an experience instead of simply leading to the discovery of new worlds of characters.

Sherman was represented by the ACA Galleries in New York throughout the 1950s and then by the Forum Gallery. Sherman has had numerous significant solo exhibitions throughout the United States and in Europe including the ACA Gallery, New York City (1951, 1955, 1958, 1960); Galleria La Nuova Pesa, Rome (1961), and Galleria Viotti, Turin (1963) – both in Italy; Forum Gallery, New York City (1963, 1967, 1970, 1974, 1986); Fairweather-Hardin Gallery, Chicago Illinois (1964); Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Yugoslavia (1965); Galerie Weltz, Salzburg, Austria and Salon Tribune Mladih, Novi Sad, Yugoslavia (1966); Galleria dell’Orso, Milan (1973), and Studio 5, Bologna (1976) – both in Italy; Madison Gallery, Toronto Canada (1976); Galleria Giulia, Rome, Italy (1982).

Sherman created numerous lithographs and prints. Many of these editioned works were produced at the renowned atelier Il Bisonte in Florence who also produced significant works for Henry Moore and Pablo Picasso.

Sherman won numerous awards and prizes for her work including a Pepsi Cola award (1945), Fulbright Foundation fellowship to Italy (1952-1954), a painting award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York City (1964) and their Childe Hassam Prize (1970); in addition to many medals, citations and prizes in exhibitions throughout Italy and the Proctor Prize, National Academy of Design, New York City (1976).

Style and influences

Sherman's major, and critically acclaimed, work produced in Italy during the mid 1950 was focused on the sun drenched settings, people and post World War II milieu of Southern Italy. The tonal and ethereal quality of her paintings from this period capture the arid colors and blinding light of the Mezzogiorno.

Mario Penelope recalled in his 1983 essay on Sherman titled Coherence And Reality: "a group of paintings done during that first stay which were exhibited in nineteen hundred and fifty five in her first Roman one-person show at the Zodiac Gallery. In these canvases there were images of women, children, and sharecroppers; portrayed austerely in their most typical attitudes in a strange archaic manner. They seemed encamped with weighted solemmity in a timeless spatiality; in an understated drama of transcendent sadness which laid bare with bitter emotion the dark pathetic solitude of that sharecropper world. Shapes and forms were conceived within a rigorous formal scheme. These shapes were layered into a rhythm of concrete volumes in which at intervals the profound sense of the value of color soberly restrained filtered through. Forms were emphasized by a concise pre-meditated linear drawing in which there were residual suggestions of the lesson of Picasso and Cubism".

“In Sherman’s work there is a consistent involvement with a visualization of distorted values in the continuum of social generalization. During 1962 she completed a series of large composition paintings that focused on the death of the matrix of post World War II sex symbols. The capacity of Sherman to use the ambivalence inherent in metaphorical values, as a springboard in the employ of tonal color, immersed in diffused light has also made it possible to retain a sensitivity towards a younger generation’s milieu. Her work in the 1970s reflected a shift in the pictorialization of generalized meanings; a constantly precarious situation for all painters of Sherman’s generations.”

Guzzetti Chapel (Cappella Guzzetti), Camera Picta, Cortona Italia Between 1987 and 1994 Sherman created major site-specific fresco and altarpiece commission in Cortona, Italy for the Guzzetti Chapel on the grounds of the Villa Corono. The fresco cycle called Camera Picta are painted on the walls of the 18th-century building owned by the Italian art patrons the Guzzettis. The allegorical work focus on the biblical and secular themes including sheep, bucolic landscape and flora. The paintings are saturated in muted tones and soft umber, ochre and cream colors that recall her work of the 1950s. The full commission included paintings, sculpture and architectural trompe-l'œil. The altar-piece, (1992-1994) utilizes three-dimensional ceramic forms, a rendering of sheep in repetition as biblical symbolism.

Legacy Sherman's work is included in numerous private and public permanent collections including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York; the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; Syracuse University; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome; the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy; Sconci Art Gallery, Dubai; Jerusalem Museum, Israel; National Gallery of Modern Art, Bratislava, Czechoslovakia; International Museum of Modern Art, Skopje, Yugoslavia; Gramsci Museum, Ghilarza, Sardinia.

Sherman died in New York City on October 24, 2013.

Awards 1949 Pepsi Cola Award, USA 1952 Fulbright Grant in Painting, Italy 1964 Award for Painting, National Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, USA 1964 Premio Cecina, Italy 1965 Premio Resistenza, Pistoia 1965 Premio San Giovanni (Gold medal from the President of the Senate) 1967 Premio Marzotto (Special Citation) 1969 Premio Acireale (Silver Medal) 1970 Childe Hassan Purchase Prize, National Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, USA 1975 Premio San Marino, Republic of San Marino 1976 Proctor Prize, National Academy of Design, New York.

Selected group exhibitions

1949 Whitney Museum of Art, New York, Annual Exhibitions of Contemporary American Painting 1950 Whitney Museum of Art, New York, Annual Exhibitions of Contemporary American Painting 1952 Art Institute of Chicago, Contemporary Drawings From 12 Countries 1946 -1952 1953 Brooklyn Museum, New York, 17th Biennial. 1955 Whitney Museum of Art, New York, Annual Exhibitions of Contemporary American Painting 1958 Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, Fulbright Painters 1959 Whitney Museum of Art, Annual Exhibitions of Contemporary American Painting 1960 Museum of Modern Art, New York, New Acquisitions 1962 Whitney Museum of Art, New York, Forty Artists Under Forty 1963 Whitney Museum of Art, New York, Annual Exhibitions of Contemporary American Painting 1971 Whitney Museum of Art, New York, Biennial of Painting 1971 Women in the Whitney, Museum of American Art, New York 1971 Contemporary Italian Graphics, Museum of Modern Art, Haifa and Ein Harod Neghev, Israel 1972 Grafica di Oggi, International Biennal of Venice 1974 Rassegna Internazionale d'Arte Presente, Rebubblica Amalfitana 1974 International Portraiture, Albissola 1975 Museum of Modern Art, New York, A Museum Menagerie 1975 Arte Fano 1975 Contemporary Graphics, Language and Generations in Confrontation, Vicenza 1976 National Academy of Design Painting Annual, New York 1976 Museum Menagerie, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1977 International Biennnal of Premio Fiorino, Strozzi Palace, Florence 2016 MAGI900 Museo d'arte, Women at Work, Bologna, Italy

Selected solo exhibitions 1950-1965

1951 ACA Gallery, New York, New York 1955 ACA Gallery, New York, New York 1955 Galleria dello Zodizco, Rome, Italy 1958 ACA Gallery, New York, New York 1960 ACA Gallery, New York, New York 1961 Galleria delle Ore, Milan, Italy 1961 Galleria La Nuova Pesa, Rome, Italy 1963 Galleria La Polena, Genoa, Italy 1963 Galleria delle Ore, Milan, Italy 1963 Galleria Viotti, Turin, Italy 1963 Forum Gallery, New York, New York 1963 Gallery Penelope, Rome, Italy 1963 Galleria L'Incontro, Salerno, Italy 1964 Galleria Lerici, Carrara, Italy 1964 Fairweather-Hardin Gallery, Chicago Illinois 1964 Galleria Il Sedile, Lecce, Italy 1964 Galleria Il Portico, Reggio Emilia 1964 Gallery Penelope, Rome, Italy 1964 Galleria L'Incontro, Taranto, Italy 1965 Galleria Trentadue, Milan, Italy 1965 Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje

Published portfolios 1964 The Bachae, Ed. Il Bisonte, Florence. Delphic Press, New York. 1966 The Song of Songs, Ed. Penelope Gallery, Delphic Press, New York. 1969 Folk Rock, Blues and Flower Children, Ed. Grafica Romero, Rome. 1973 The Garden of Eden, Ed. Stamperia Dell'Orso, Raffaele Bandini, Milan 1975 Nature Viva, Ed. Raffaele Bandini, Milan (text by Carlo Bernari)

Museum collections

Museum of Modern Art, New York Whitney Museum of American Art, New York National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome National Academy Museum, New York Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York University of Nebraska Art Galleries, Lincoln, Nebraska Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Collection of the University of Iowa, Iowa City Collection of Temple University, Philadelphia Hobart Museum, Syracuse, New York Collection of Modern Art, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas Chrysler Museum (Provincetown, Massachusetts)|Chrysler Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts Jerusalem Museum, Israel International Museum of Contemporary Art, Florence Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Institute of International Studies Collection, New York Collection of Modern Art, Fairleigh Dickerson University, New Jersey Drawing and Graphics Collection, Uffizzi Gallery, Florence Graphic Archive, Library of Palazzo, Venezia, Rome Gallery of Modern Art, Republic of San Marino National Gallery of Modern Art, Bratislava National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome International Museum of Modern Art, Skopje International Museum of Modern Art, Florence Gramsci Museum, Ghilarza, Sardinia Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas Museum of the 1900s, Florence, Italy

Documentary film Painting Like Life, 1969, Rome. Prod: Patara; Director, Milla Pastorino Sarai Sherman - Painting, 1971/76/77. Rome. Prod. Di Ciaula, Director, Libero Bizzarri