1980s Paintings

Acrylic on canvas. Signed, dated, titled, and estate stamped on verso. 50.25 x 31 in. 51.25 x 32 in. (framed) Custom framed in maple. Provenance Estate of Jack Roth Born in Brockway, Pennsylvania, Jack Roth was at various times a painter, poet, photographer, and mathematician. He enrolled at Pennsylvania State University in 1943 to study chemistry, but like many of his fellow Abstract Expressionists, his matriculation was interrupted World War II, where he served in both the Army and Air Force. Discharged from the service in 1948, Roth moved to Big Sur, California and married his first wife, Colleen Bleier, with whom he had two daughters. A year later, the young family settled in San Francisco, where Jack enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts. It was here that he studied painting under Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park, and Elmer Bischoff. The Roth family left the Bay Area to return to Pennsylvania, where Jack completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry in 1951. In pursuit of his seemingly discordant academic interests, Roth moved yet again, this time to Iowa where he received a Master of Fine Arts at Iowa State University in 1953. Seeking gainful employment, Roth moved to New York, settling in the lower East Side where he began looking for a teaching job and working as a reviewer for Arts Digest magazine. Now divorced, in 1954 Roth married the artist Rachel Chester whom he had met in Iowa. He continued to paint and work odd jobs, some of which were as a hotel night clerk and an orderly at Beekman Downtown Hospital. That year, he unsuccessfully applied for the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in the field of photography. However, Roth’s professional prospects greatly improved when his work was selected by James Johnson Sweeney, Director of the Guggenheim Museum of Art for the traveling exhibition Younger American Painters, alongside giants such as William Baziotes, Richard Diebenkorn, Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Morris Louis, and others. One of the first major debuts of the Abstract Expressionist movement to be shown at an American museum, the exhibit traveled to the prominent museums across the country. In 1956 he began graduate work in mathematics at New York University. Opting to dive back into academia, Roth began graduate coursework in mathematics at New York University in 1956. He enrolled at Duke University in 1958, receiving his PhD in mathematics in 1962. Roth continued to create art throughout the pendency of his graduate studies and in 1963, legendary Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) curators Dorothy Miller and William Lieberman recommended Roth as the new talent graphic artist for Art in America. Concurrently, MoMA purchased several works from Roth for the museum’s permanent collection. During this period of artistic achievement, Roth continued to teach - first, at the University of South Florida in Tampa, before moving back north to Montclair, New Jersey, where he was hired as the chairman of the Mathematics department at Upsala College. In 1971 he accepted a dual appointment at Ramapo College, teaching both mathematics and advanced painting. After he received tenure and his finances were secure, his artistic production thrived as he received the first Thomases Award for contributions at the school, which came with the use of a large studio space. This allowed him to work with larger canvases and become what he saw as an Abstract Expressionist Color Field painter. In 1978, the acclaimed gallery Knoedler & Co. in New York began representation of Roth’s work. Other artists represented by the gallery at this time included Alexander Calder, Adolf Gottlieb...

A striking and lively work by Roth that would be an exciting addition to any interior and is of high market value. Great frame of high quality - modernist flat panel frame with exceptional 24 karat silvered leafing. Large scale work by a highly collected American abstractionist. Born in Brockway, Pennsylvania in 1927 Jack Roth began his studies in chemistry at Pennsylvania State University in 1943 and, though his tenure there was interrupted by service in World War II, he would go on to earn a Bachelors degree in Chemistry, a Masters in Fine Arts, and a PhD in mathematics. At the California School of Fine Arts he studies under Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Richard Diebenkorn, David Park and Elmer Bischoff, mentors who would soon become colleagues. Painting from a studio in New York City’s lower East Side, Roth attracted the attention of James Johnson Sweeney, Director of the Guggenheim Museum of Art, who selected Roth for the museum’s traveling exhibition Younger American Painters, a multi-venue exhibition which included work by Baziotes, Diebenkorn, Gottlieb, Guston, Kline, de Kooning, Motherwell, Pollock among others. In 1963 Museum of Modern Art curators Dorothy Miller and William Lieberman recommended that the periodical Art in America name Roth the new talent graphic artist and had themselves purchased several works for the museum’s permanent collection. He was then selected for a national traveling exhibition at the University of Kentucky, Graphics 63, which was circulated by the Smithsonian Institution. That same year he was included in a New Acquisitions exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. From 1963 to 1966 Roth taught at the University of Southern Florida in Tampa before moving to Montclair, New Jersey, where he was worked as chairman of the Mathematics department at Upsala College and concurrently as a mathematics professor and paintings professor at Ramapo College in 1971 where he was given a large studio, space enough to work with larger canvases developing as an Abstract Expressionist Color field painter. In 1978 the acclaimed gallery, Knoedler & Co. in New York City began their representation of Jack Roth’s work. At this time Knoedler & Co. represented Alexander Calder, Adolf Gottlieb...

If ever the art world could be said to have a Renaissance Man (excluding Da Vinci!) it would be Jack Roth, abstract expressionist painter, poet, photographer and mathematician. He received degrees in chemistry and fine art, did graduate work in mathematics, and would teach mathematics and art throughout his career. Roth is a second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter, known for his Colorfield work. Though he was fully two decades younger than some of the elder statesmen...

An abstract acrylic on canvas executed in bright, primary red, blue and yellow by Post War artist Jack Roth. Signed, dated and titled verso, "ROTH81 "NEW SYNTHESIS - 15".