Norman Rubington

"Seated Nude, " Norman Rubington, oil on paper, Mid-Century, Hirschhorn Museum

Norman Rubington was an artist whose career parallels those of the great names in mid-20th century art history, even as he stood apart in his desire not to emulate but to re-examine methods of expression in a distinctive voice. He was deliberate in his early studies, attending Yale University. After a three-year stint in the Army rendering reconnaissance maps, Rubington moved to Paris to study at Le Grand Chaumière and École des Beaux-Arts. He found a level of respect for artists in Europe that was not common in the United States, and this support encouraged Rubington to explore and challenge the established schools of Cubist and Expressionist painting. He was considered one of the most talented of the younger American artists in Paris and was selected for the Salon d'Automne in 1948, a rare distinction for an American. One French critic hailed Rubington's solo show at Galerie Huit in 1950 as an astonishing success. Rubington's art, he wrote, "was burning with a new flame." He exhibited with the best young French artists of the day Bernard Buffet, André Minaux, Roger Montane, as well as American painters Sidney Geist, Bill Rivers and Jules Olitsky. Under the guidance of the master printer Roger Lacourière, he also achieved a remarkable proficiency, using aquatint to eloquent effect and mastered the technique of soft-ground etching. Rubington won a Prix de Rome in 1951, a Tiffany Foundation Fellowship in 1954 and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1958. He was a resident at the MacDowell Colony in 1970. His approach to painting and other media had an expressionist tone grounded in representation. Rubington's range of subject matter was broad and he would focus on depicting series of like compositions through a variety of approaches. His most poignant subject was humanity on the fringe.