Red Bamboo
Susan Rothenberg
American, 1945–2020
1991
A woodcut in which Susan Rothenberg pares the image to a single vertical red bamboo stalk and an ambiguous dark whorl above a pale green tiled field, aiming to distill a scene into elemental shapes and tactile marks that hover between representation and abstraction.
You’re struck by the vivid red stalk cutting through a soft, hand‑printed green checkerboard while the carved, scratchy black mass at the top gathers restless movement against the otherwise calm surface, making the print feel both flat and physically worked.
By translating her painterly gestures into woodcut, Rothenberg blurred figuration and abstraction and showed how printmaking could carry the immediacy and bodily presence central to late 20th‑century American art.
Medium
Woodcut
Dimensions
composition (irreg.): 36 3/4 x 24 1/16" (93.4 x 61.1 cm); sheet: 45 13/16 x 32 3/16" (116.4 x 81.8 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Emily Fisher Landau
Accession
144.1992
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
