Watercolor and pen and ink on cream wove paper, 1936. 280x383 mm; 11x15 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right recto.
Provenance: Conner Rosenkranz, New York, with the label.
Rosenborg (1913-1992) was born in New York to Swedish parents and proved to be a precocious young artist early on. As a teenager, Rosenborg won a scholarship to attend art classes at the American Museum of Natural History. This learned keen observance of nature would be sustained throughout his artistic career. Rosenborg began studying with the artist Henriette Reiss, who was associated with Wasily Kandinsky, and introduced Rosenborg to avant-garde ideas. Early in his career, Rosenborg exhibited in group shows in New York, where his focus on nature, rather than geometric forms set him apart from his contemporaries. He had his first solo exhibition at the Eighth Street Theater in 1935. He became known for his use of bright colors, attention to visual movement and rhythm, and in his oils, textures. During the 1940's, Rosenborg was in a romantic relationship with artist Louise Nevelson, but due to his temper and alcoholism, had few other long term friends or a longstanding relationship with a particular gallery. Though he continued to associate with and show with the New York Abstract Expressionists during the 1950's, Rosenborg's style remained largely independent from those influences. He had a long career, showing his work at various galleries through the 1980's. In a review of his show at the Princeton Gallery of Fine Art in 1983, writer Vivien Raynor posited that "Rosenborg seems powered less by a love of nature than by a passion to dominate it with his own immutable laws."
