NEW YORK, NY.- Anita Shapolsky Gallery is presenting Jump In And Move Around, a retrospective of Amaranth Ehrenhalt’s prolific body of work, in honor of her ninety-second birthday.
Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1928, Amaranth Ehrenhalt spent her formative years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a Scholarship student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Amaranth received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Academy. She then moved to New York City’s Greenwich Village ready to explore her art.
She met, on the eve of her departure for Paris, Willem de Kooning for a drink at the legendary Cedar Tavern in New York City. They planned a dinner date upon her return to the US. Once in Paris, Amaranth fell in with the likes of Seymour Boardman, Joan Mitchell, Shirley Jaffe and Sonia Delaunay, and exhibited her works alongside theirs. Sonia became Amaranth’s patron, providing her with art supplies and connecting her to artist networks. Amaranth worked tirelessly, fitting in with her cohorts and producing a large body of works. Although Amaranth spent most of her career in Paris, she is considered as part of the New York Abstractionist School of the 1950’s. As a woman in the predominately white, male movement, Amaranth proved once again that traditional boundaries don’t apply. As for the dinner with Willem de Kooning, it would be 38 years later that she returned to New York, but alas he had passed.
Amaranth worked in a variety of media, producing prints, paintings, sculpture, mosaics, ceramics, tapestries, scarves, and watercolors. The titles of her paintings often refer to specific memories, inscribed with dynamic, interactive, and bold brushstrokes.
Amaranth Ehrenhalt is an artist in the truest sense. Looking around her apartment one realizes there isn’t a single space void of her work. Her colorful and dynamic paintings, over decades in various mediums, adorn the walls; Rolled canvases are tucked into any spot that will hold them. The extemporaneous style of her work, expressed with vibrant and warm colors, surrounds you from every angle - there’s no corner left bare and no sense untouched by her art. This exhibition serves as an homage to an artist who’s never stopped making work - even now, at 92, Ehrenhalt continues her tradition. Each painting is a complete inseparable creation, her passion and ingenuity bounding from her canvases, sculptures and other mediums, emanates from these powerful works on display. She immersed herself in the process of creating on the canvas, or the medium of her choice, using color to express strength, fragility and her vision.
After all, Manet said: “Painting is like throwing oneself into the sea to learn how to swim.” Amaranth took a running dive and has been moving around ever since.
Amaranth’s many solo and group exhibitions in Paris, Italy, New York, and California continue to excite audiences from past and contemporary generations. She has exhibited in solo shows in Paris, New York, and Los Angeles, and has pieces in collections at the Bibliotheque National de Paris, the National Foundation of Contemporary Art in Paris, and the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. She is in numerous private collections.
