About Rosita Gottlieb
Rosita painted professionally for more than 50 years and mastered the art of painting with the spatula, the artist’s knife.
Her first exhibition was at the National Art Institute in Panama City in 1963. Over the years she exhibited in galleries worldwide, including Mexico City, Tel Aviv, London, San Francisco, Taipei, the Los Angeles area, and San Jose, Costa Rica. Her last exhibit was in 2015 at the Thousand Oaks (California) Civic Arts Plaza.
During her career, Rosita gained a reputation as a bold colorist. Her primary medium was oil, to which she added marble sand, beeswax, wire mesh, and other materials, to create thickly textured paintings.
“Her jammy colors bubble and eddy across extraordinary canvases,”wrote James Heard, of the London Arts Review, during a London exhibition in 1973.
Her artwork is “a mystical journey that begins in the mysterious world of the rainforest and leads to other more personal uncharted mysteries,”wrote Aubrey Simpson for a 1994 cover article in United Airline’s inflight magazine Hemispheres. “Her expressionistic paintings are a visual diary of her relentless spiritual search. She uses the knife to create a rich, hypnotic, multidimensional effect,”
Rosita studied at the Art Students League in New York, under Hans Hoffmann and other outstanding teachers, and later in Mexico at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. In Mexico, she also worked under David Alfredo Siquieros, one of the greatest muralists of the past century.
Throughout her long career, Rosita’s created hundreds of paintings. Her exhibitions were the subject of many articles and reviews, including the Mexico City News, Mexico City Excelsior, Israel’s Yediot Aharonot, the Nairobi Daily Nation, Art Scene Magazine (Los Angeles), the Los Angeles Times, the American Club Magazine of Hong Kong, Taiwan’s foremost art magazine, and in LACSA’s World, the inflight publication of Costa Rica’s national airline. Los Angeles’ Spanish-language television stations also featured her artistic tribute to rainforest conservation, as did prominent environmentalist Nancy Pearlman on her popular cable TV environmental program.
Rosita lived in numerous places during her life: her birthplace Costa Rica, New York City, Miami, Panama City, Mexico City, Tel Aviv, and, for the last 40 years of her life in the Los Angeles area.
CRITICS COMMENTS
“Her jammy colors bubble and eddy across extraordinary canvases.”
– James Heard, London Arts Review
“She is expressionistic in technique, using the paint freely and loosely with vibrant contrasted complementary colors. The staple evocation of these paintings is of a brooding mood of power. Change of scale is Rosita’s main weapon and the means by which she arrests our attention…(with her) colorful fantasies.”
– Toby Joysmith, Mexico City News
“…The poetic projections of her representations of reality are enhanced by a perfect management of color combinations.”
– Margarita Nelken, Mexico City Excelsior
“The longer one looks at her paintings, the more one is aware of her coloristic values.”
— Miriam Tal, Yediot Aharonot, Tel Aviv
“Her pictures are startling in their boldness of color and composition. All of her canvases throw the imagination into the throes of the unknown.”
– Barbara Kimenye, Nairobi Daily Nation
“(Her rainforest paintings) “are bold, gestural, colorful compositions that sing out with verdant life and vitality.”
– Art Scene Magazine, Los Angeles
“…Gottlieb’s expressionistic paintings are a visual diary of her relentless spiritual search…(she uses the knife) to create a rich, hypnotic, multidimensional effect.”
– Aubrey Simpson, Hemispheres Magazine
MAJOR INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS AND PRESENTATIONS
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Panama City, 1963.
Galeria Excelsior, Mexico City, 1965.
Galeria Chapultepec of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 1966.
Galeria de May Brooks, Mexico City, 1966.
Galeria del Centro Deportivo Israelita, Mexico City, 1967.
Galeria Lepe, Puerto Vallarta, 1968.
Galeria Chapultepec of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 1969.
Galeria Barrilaco, Mexico City, 1970.
Galeria del Centro Deportivo Israelita, Mexico City, 1971.
Haramati Gallery, Tel Aviv, 1972.
Old Jaffo Gallery, Tel Aviv, 1973.
Woodstock Gallery, London, 1973.
Israel Philharmonic, Tel Aviv, honoring Maestro Mikhail Rostropovich, 1974.
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1975.
Los Angeles Public Library, 1976.
S. Harris Gallery, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, 1977.
Wexler-Weiss Gallery, Encino, 1978.
Galeria Wolmy, Mexico City, 1979.
Galeria del Centro Deportivo Israelita, Mexico City, 1979.
Galeria Wolmy, Mexico City, 1980.
Westwood Center of the Arts, Los Angeles, 1981.
Senior Eye Gallery, Long Beach, 1982.
Galeria Mer-Kup, Mexico City, 1983.
Galeria Wolmy, Mexico City, 1983.
Mexican-North American Institute, Mexico City, 1983.
Design Center Theater Art Gallery, Los Angeles, 1985.
Palmcrest House Senior Eye Gallery, Long Beach, 1987.
Celebrity benefit screening of “At Play In The Field of the Lord,” for Universal Studios and
– Rainforest Action Network, Los Angeles, December 1991.
201 California Gallery, San Francisco, March 1992.
Palmcrest House Senior Eye Gallery, Long Beach, November 1992.
Lakes Gallery International, Taipei (Taiwan), May 1993.
National Audubon Society, Los Angeles, May 1995.
Artinasia Gallery, Hong Kong, December 1995-January 1996.
Tustin Renaissance Gallery, Tustin, May-June 1996.
Blue Moon Gallery, Santa Monica, Summer 1998.
Galeria Sister Karen Boccalero, Olvera Street, Los Angeles, Summer 1999.
Galeria del Mundo, EcoStation, Culver City, February 2001.
SELECTED COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS
Mexico City Municipal Gallery of Art, 1966.
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, “Women in the arts,” 1968, 1967.
Galeria Aleph, Mexico City, 1970.
The City of Tel Aviv (Israel), City Hall, 1972.
The City of Tiberias (Israel), City Hall, 1972.
Laguna Beach Museum of Art Invitational, 1976.
Riggs Gallery, San Diego, Thoroughbred Racing Exhibit, 1980.
Museum of Science and Industry, Artists Equity Salute to Los Angeles Bicentennial, November 1980.
National University of Mexico, “Race, racism, genocide and holocaust,” 1981.
Brand Library, Glendale, Artists Equity Collective, 1982.
Laguna Beach Museum of Art Invitational, 1984.
Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, “Winter ’85 Art Show.”
Gordon Gallery, Santa Monica, 1991.
Lakes Gallery International, Taipei, August 1993.
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Fine Arts Gallery, Hong Kong, and Lakes Gallery International, Taipei, January 1994.
American Club, Hong Kong, May 1994.
Opts Gallery, San Francisco, December 1994.
Artinasia Gallery, Hong Kong, October 1995.
Ladie John Dill Studio (benefitting Rainforest Action Network), Venice, CA, November 1995.
Artinasia Gallery, Hong Kong, March 1996.
Tustin Rennaissance Gallery, July-September 1996.
The Children’s Museum (Museo del Nino), San Jose, Costa Rica, November 1997.
Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach (California), March 2004.
Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, Spring 2015.
COLLECTIONS
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.
The Museum of the Holocaust, Jerusalem.
Museum of Modern Art, Jerusalem.
Estate of the late Mexican President Lopez Mateos.
Palmcrest House Convalescent Home, Long Beach, California.
Whoopi Goldberg
© 2016 Rosita Gottlieb