Purple Flowers (diptych), circa 1964, oil on board, 47.75 x 49 in
Moon Over The Pines, 1955, casein on board, 28 x 20 in
ART News:
SANTA FE — LewAllen Galleries is honored to present Dorothy Browdy Kushner: A Force of Nature, an exhibition of abstract and landscape paintings by the dedicated California and New York Mid-20th Century Modernist painter Dorothy Browdy Kushner (1909–2000). Opening Friday, March 13, 2026, the exhibition highlights Kushner’s evocative synthesis of color, light, and place, showcasing a rigorous body of work that pushed her subjects, particularly landscapes and florals, toward vigorous abstraction.
Kushner’s diverse oeuvre, created predominantly in Southern California, reveals an artistic journey marked by continuous formal exploration and a powerful command of chromatic potential. Her work evolved from early Cubist-inspired casein on paper or board landscapes—which she termed the “Prismatics”—to gestural abstractions and culminating in her series of acrylic High Horizon Landscapes. These late-period works are characterized by vibrant, expansive fields of hue, often employing a vertically oriented picture plane to enhance the scene’s monumental scale.
The works from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s demonstrate her strength, notably in her bold floral depictions which she rendered in the same monumental scale as her landscapes. Influenced by masters such as German-American Color Expressionist Lyonel Feininger, second generation American Abstract Expressionist Richards Ruben, and French Abstract Expressionist landscape painter Nicolas de Staël, Kushner’s paintings stand firmly within the history of modern abstraction, recognized for their masterful structure and bold, expressive palette. In response to the exclusionary male-oriented gallery-world prevalent in the ‘50s and 60’s, Kushner and a group of other female modernists, founded in the mid-1950s a collective called “The Group” in the San Gabriel Valley, northeast of Los Angeles. They began ©2025 LewAllen Contemporary, LLC ©2026 Estate of Dorothy Browdy Kushner meeting monthly to discuss current trends in art, examined and critiqued paintings that each member brought, and provided mutual support. Most were abstractionists and the talk centered on composition, color and line, usually following a Hans Hoffman derived discourse on “push-pull”, dynamism of form, and strong central elements in composition. Like Kushner, many studied with Ruben, an acolyte who had relocated to Los Angeles.
Kushner’s career is distinguished by influences from that experience and manifests its own intellectual rigor and diverse development, establishing her reputation for formidable compositions, assertive expression and alluring color choices in her works.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Kushner studied with key figures including Thomas Hart Benton at the Kansas City Art Institute and Reginald Marsh at the Art Students League in New York. Her paintings are held in the permanent collections of prestigious institutions such as the Tate Modern in London, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, among numerous others.
Trees, 1965, oil on canvas, 39.75×63.75
Glissade, circa 1967, casein, 30 x 40 in