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Sarah Belchetz-Swenson

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Sarah Belchetz-Swenson
Born
Sarah Belchetz

May 24, 1938
Cairo, Egypt
DiedSeptember 12, 2021(2021-09-12) (aged 83)
Known forPainting, printmaker, portraits

Sarah Belchetz-Swenson (née Belchetz; May 24, 1938 – September 12, 2021) was a painter, printmaker, and portraitist.[1]

Belchetz-Swenson was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1938, the daughter of Arnold and Pearl Belchetz. Raised in suburban Larchmont, New York, at age 13, she signed herself up for life-drawing classes at the Art Students' League in New York and spent Saturdays there through high school. She majored in studio art at Oberlin College, focusing on modern and historical painting and printing techniques.[2] She briefly engaged with the New York art scene, supported by fellow artists, including her cousin Rudolf Baranik (who wrote the introduction to her Holocaust memorial Revisions)[3] and the feminist painter May Stevens. She later moved to Johnson, Vermont with her husband, Victor Swenson, and their two daughters. Following a divorce in the early 1990s, she settled in Williamsburg, Massachusetts.[citation needed]

Rites, Belchetz-Swenson's most widely-exhibited work,[4][5] is a series of fourteen paintings, four monotypes, and four lithographs,[6] linking scenes from the lives of contemporary women and girls with images from the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii.[7][8][9]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Sarah Belchetz-Swenson". belchetz-swenson.com.
  2. ^ "Transforming the Ordinary / Oberlin Alumni Magazine / Spring 2007". www2.oberlin.edu.
  3. ^ Swenson, Sarah; Baranik, Rudolf (December 7, 1977). Revisions. French Hill Press – via Library Catalog (Blacklight).
  4. ^ See Diane Kirkpatrick, The Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii; Ancient Ritual, Modern Muse, (exhibition catalogue), Kelsey Museum and the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan
  5. ^ 1986 Catherine Saxon, "A Classicist’s View", Sarah Swenson: Rites, (exhibition catalogue), Lang Gallery, Scripps College, Claremont, California, August–October, 1986
  6. ^ See Belchetz-Swenson's website at www.belchetz-swenson.com/rites
  7. ^ Elinor W. Gadon, "Sarah Swenson: Rites", Art New England, May 6, 1984
  8. ^ Peggy Sadler, "Rites", New Hampshire Times, April 24
  9. ^ Catherine Saxon, "A Classicist's View", Sarah Swenson: Rites, (exhibition catalogue), Lang Gallery, Scripps College, Claremont, California, August–October 1986.