Rosemarie Castoro (1939 - 2015) was born in Brooklyn, New York and established herself in the late 60s as one of the few well-recognized female painters among the New York Minimalists. Castoro was often overshadowed by men, including her then-husband Carl Andre and their friends Sol Lewitt, Frank Stella, Mark di Suvero, and Robert Smithson. That shadow has lifted, and today Rosemarie Castoro is gaining renewed attention and praise for her pioneering works.
Castoro worked in painting, sculpture, performance, and installation throughout her career. By 1964 she directed her focus on painting and drawing, creating a pioneering body of work centered around highly sophisticated hard-edge abstraction. Beginning in the late 1960s, Castoro’s works became more sculptural; the earliest example is her series of Brushstrokes, one of which is included in MoMA's permanent collection. Based on stenographic shorthand, Castoro’s brushstrokes were constructed of cut masonite intricately shaped to mimic the strokes of brush bristles and layered with gesso, modelling paste, and marble dust. While she never renounced painting entirely, Castoro’s work seemed to largely manifest through sculpture from the 80s onward.
Castoro’s discoveries in exploring three-dimensional media transcended into her two-dimensional work, the result of which was a symbiotic relationship where the mediums often fueled each other in topic and form.
Born in Brooklyn and a graduate of Pratt Institute, Castoro’s works have been seen in more than fifty solo exhibitions since 1971, and is included in numerous public and corporate collections including MoMA; The Newark Museum; University Art Museum, Berkeley; Goldman Sachs; Bank of America; and Centre National Des Arts Plastiques, Paris, France.