Peri Schwartz
American, 1951 - 2021
NEW YORK, NY.- American painter and printmaker Peri Schwartz, whose work is collected in major museums worldwide, died in White Plains, NY on May 7, 2021 age 69, from pancreatic cancer. As a remarkably talented artist and dear friend to many, Peri’s death is a devastating and profound loss to both her family and to the art world that so valued her work. Her paintings, prints and drawings focused on composition and the interplay of color, light and space. “Her work is spare but rich,” recalled Page Bond, of the Page Bond Gallery in Richmond, Virginia who, with the Gallery Naga in Boston, represented Schwartz. “Something about all the grid lines she left in each painting, not hiding them, made her work, thoughtful and smart.”
Schwartz’s early career concentrated on painting and drawing traditional self-portraits, portraits, and still lifes. In the early 2000s, she began to focus more on her studio as her subject. Her works, many of objects from her studio such as tables, books, and paint jars, display prominent angles, shapes and lines -- the “grid” technique that came to characterize much of her later work.
She was born on October 4, 1951 in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Far Rockaway, New York. She received her BFA from the Boston University College of Fine Arts in 1973 and an MFA from Queens College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY) in 1975. She later lived and worked in New Rochelle, New York. Her art was shown nationally and internationally and is represented in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of the City of New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Staatliche Museum, Berlin, Germany and many, many others.
Schwartz is survived by her husband, Joseph Aronauer, son Jacob Aronauer, daughter Rebecca Aronauer, son-in-law Bryon Quick and grandson, ZZ Quick. Schwartz is also survived by her brothers Steven, David and Richard.
Family friend and Executive Director of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Cody Upton, says of Peri, ‘She was a dear friend, and I admired her greatly. She will be remembered as an immensely talented painter who reinvented the use of the grid in her paintings, prints, and drawings. Her remarkable sense of color and composition and carefully conceived arrangements were points of departure for dynamic experimentation with abstraction. Her work eschews easy resolution and fascinates endlessly."
The family suggests that donations in Peri’s memory go to the “Flippo Gallery at Randolph-Macon College”, attn: Office of Advancement, PO Box 5005, Ashland
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