Elizabeth Hertz

Biographical information:

Elizabeth Hertz studied with the Cleveland-school artist William Zorach, at the Art Students League in New York in the 1940s. She also went to Paris and met several painters, among who included American painter, Stanton MacDonald-Wright. She was heavily influenced by his ideas of synchromism, a theory he and fellow painter Morgan Russell developed that placed a great emphasis on juxtapositions and reverberations of color and that sought to free art from a literal description of the world. These ideas connected the qualities of colors to those of music, as well as to those of fellow artists Delacroix, the Impressionists, Cézanne, and Matisse. Similarly, Hertz employs an abstract language of bold colors and geometric shapes that rely more on their dissonances and harmonies with one another, than anything with direct association to the natural world. The result is a strong body of work that can stand on its own amongst the DAI's collection of artists of her generation.

Elizabeth Hertz, a resident of Yellow Springs, Ohio, also studied at the Dayton Art Institute following her move to this city in the late 1960s, thus the inclusion of her work in the DAI's collection is important to her legacy in the community and the region.

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Ph.D.

Curator of Collections and Exhibitions