page_title: Sarai Sherman
section_title: 1955-1960
hierarchical_section_title: Sarai Sherman / Life and work / 1955-1960
caption_attribution_description: English: Bear Cat
context_page_description: Sarai Sherman 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.
context_section_description: From 1955 to 1960 Sherman worked in the United States. During this period, she amplified the typology and the background of her experiences, weighting the density of her painting. She retracted her steps from Picasso to the Impressionists. Like Francis Bacon, who after his surrealist Phicassian phase reverted to color painting, Sherman transferred onto her canvas a number of principles of the French masters of the late nineteenth century, filtered through schemes, vision and images, which were neither nineteenth century nor post-romantic in character, largely because internal plastic contraditions of the work and because of her awareness of the dimension of time. The ever-changing spectacle offered by the streets, are elements which have entered her fantasy by force, obliging her to move in a humble effort towards an increased objectivity, but which in the same act of reduction emerge more autobiographical then ever.
  Sherman was a part of the emergency response to the 1966 flood of the Arno in Florence Italy. A group of international women artists called the “Flood Ladies” donated work to the city as a sign of solidarity following the Arno's catastrophic damage. The work donated to the city is now housed in the "Museum of the 1900s." As part of the 50th anniversary of the flooding, Sherman's work titled Icarus was one of 28 in a representative traveling exhibition and featured in the Book “When the World Answered” and the 2015 PBS documentary of the same name.
  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).
caption: Bear Cat, 1957
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