Discipline: Visual Art – painting

Esther Rolick

Discipline: Visual Art – painting
Region: Rochester, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1947, 1952

Esther Rolick (1922-2008) was an American painter. She studied at the Art Students League and was represented by Jacques Seligmann Galleries in New York in the early 1950's. She was a Fellow at Yaddo and MacDowell, and her exhibition credits range from the Whitney Museum of American Art to Le Centre D'Art in Haiti. Rolick traveled and painted extensively, especially in Bogota, Colombia, Rome, and Tahiti. She is listed in Who Was Who in American Art, and her papers are in the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution.

She was known for her style which was considered to be both expressionist and neo-romantic. In some of her works she painted with what one critic called "meticulous realism" but was better known for works incorporating fantastic elements. Her most prolific periods centered around dream-scapes of fantasy plants, flowers, and peaceful and friendly wildlife. She was one of the few female artists in the avante-gard movement of the late 1940s and 1950s. She taught college classes for many years and achieved recognition for taking innovative approaches.

Studios

New Hampshire

Esther Rolick worked in the New Hampshire studio.

New Hampshire Studio, originally named Peterborough Studio, was given to MacDowell by Mr. and Mrs. William Schofield, Mrs. H. A. Chamberlain, Mrs. Andrew Draper, and Miss Ruth Cheney. The studio was renamed in 1943. The Gilbert Verney Foundation established an endowed maintenance fund in 1990, and a bequest in memory of MacDowell Fellow Victor Candell underwrote the…

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