Susan Rothenberg (1945–2020) was an American painter, printmaker, sculptor, and draughtswoman acclaimed for her lush figurative paintings. She was born in Buffalo, New York, and attended Cornell University, receiving a bachelor of fine arts in 1967. Rothenberg then moved to New York City. She had her first solo show in 1975 at the experimental New York City art space 112 Greene Street. The paintings that Rothenberg debuted at the 112 Greene Street show—”three large, scabrous canvases depicting the pared-down form of a horse cleaved by a vertical or horizontal line”—resounded at a time when Minimalism and Conceptualism were the dominant art movement. The Museum of Modern Art acquired its first piece by Rothenberg in 1976, and the Whitney Museum of American Art included her in its New Image Painting exhibition in 1978. In the 1980s, Rothenberg moved beyond her famous horse motif to paint other figures—from hands and heads to boats and birds—in complex works full of color and movement. Rothenberg relocated to New Mexico in 1990. Her later paintings reflect the change in Rothenberg’s environment: they are bigger and more vibrant, capturing what she called the “melodrama of nature.” Though the subject matter, palette, and perspective of Rothenberg’s paintings shifted, her  thickly layered, energetic brushwork endured. 

Rothenberg’s solo exhibitions have been presented at Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Switzerland; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; the Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Illinois; Seattle Art Museum, Washington; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts. Rothenberg’s work is in important public and private collections, including the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands; Tate Britain, London, England; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, among others. 

Rothenberg’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions and group exhibitions with GRAY, including On Both Sides of My Line, 2021 and GRAY at 60, 2023. 

The Estate of Susan Rothenberg is represented by Sperone Westwater in New York.