From 1973, while studying at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Josefowitz made large figurative paintings that channelled the influence of major artistic movements of the 20th Century, including fauvism, expressionism, and Der Blaue Reiter. Driven by a relentless need for self-expression, she continued her exploration of the corporeal in works on paper that articulated the different configurations a human body can take as a form of both resilience and liberation. She frequently drew in notebooks, depicting her dreams and inner world, and her art quickly revealed a unique awareness of and sensitivity to the physical forms of the self and specifically female bodies.
‘Painting is the only thing I know how to do, it’s like breathing, it’s natural. I paint because I need to, because if I don’t paint, I go crazy, I need to express, it’s my way of existing.’
—Cathy Josefowitz
Untitled (c. 1974) explores the theme of the female nude in an interior space and challenges the traditional depiction of the reclining nude through the artist’s female gaze and contemporary position. The sinusoidal rhythm and movement of the pose is emphasized by a black contour line following the profile of the nude figure, while the simplification of the subject’s form makes the work appear quite abstract. The unnaturalistic color and vivid brushstrokes, freely recall the work of fauvists Henri Matisse and André Derain, who rejected the traditional three-dimensional space in favour for a new pictorial space defined by the movement of color planes.
About the artist
Prolific, prescient and powerfully original yet under-recognized in her lifetime, Cathy Josefowitz (1956 – 2014) produced a diverse body of work that ingeniously transcends hierarchies of medium and genre. Over the course of four decades, this New York-born, Swiss-raised artist created an oeuvre of remarkable ambition, spanning drawing and painting, theater and dance, as she developed a deeply personal visual syntax in her quest to represent the body as an expressive vehicle of individual experience. Josefowitz’s practice reconciled the visual arts and performance, leaving an exceptional legacy as substantial in scale as it is intimate and potent in its impact.
Artwork images © Estate of Cathy Josefowitz. Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer
Portrait of Cathy Josefowitz © Estate of Cathy Josefowitz. Photo: Bettina Moriceau Maillard