VIEWING ROOM

Announcing participation in this year's TEFAF New York a retrospective presentation of the Swiss painter Verena Loewensberg (b. 1912 - d. 1986 Zurich, Switzerland).

Loewensberg was introduced to design and colour theory at the Basel trade school in 1927 before taking up a weaver apprenticeship alongside training in dance and choreography. The echoes of these disciplines can be found throughout her work; fundamentally constructive in nature but imbued with great freedom, poetry and musicality.

Between 1934 and 1936 Loewensberg visited Paris several times often accompanied by her close lifelong friend Max Bill who introduced her to 'Abstraction-Création' and Georges Vantongerloo who had a lasting effect on her work. As of 1936 she belonged to the Swiss avant-garde, while after the war she became known as the only female artist of the small circle of the Zurich Concrete, with Max Bill, Richard Paul Lohse and Camille Graeser.

From the sixties onwards, at the time of colour field, conceptual painting and minimalism, she created an extensive series of reduced, purely coloured compositions that tackled the problem of figure and ground. Her work is of an independence and autonomy that eludes classification.

Last year Loewensberg had a major Retrospective at the MAMCO in Geneva, Switzerland.