Rosalie Gwathmey
American, 1908-2001
Born 1908, Charlotte, North Carolina
Died 2001
Gwathmey trained as a painter in Philadelphia, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and later at the Art Students League in New York. In 1935 she married the social realist painter and progressive activist Robert Gwathmey, whom she had met at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1929. In 1942 she joined the Photo League, where she studied with Sid Grossman and Paul Strand. Through 1949 she contributed in various capacities to Photo Notes, as writer, reviewer, and editor. Gwathmey spent her summers in North Carolina and Virginia, photographing the labor and housing conditions of the rural South. Her work was featured in several group exhibitions around New York during the 1940s, and in a solo exhibition at the Photo League in 1951. In the early 1950s, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, began investigating progressives, and by mid-decade the agency's harassment of her husband had grown intense. In response, Gwathmey gave up photography, destroyed her negatives, and donated many of her prints to The New York Public Library. She turned instead to textile design and after 1955 enjoyed considerable success. She retired to Amagansett, New York. A photograph by her was included in the landmark Museum of Modern Art exhibition "The Family of Man" (1955). Her work was shown by Glenn Horowitz in his gallery in East Hampton, New York, in 1994, and appeared in the exhibition The Women of the Photo League at Higher Pictures Gallery, New York (2009). Her son was the modernist architect Charles Gwathmey (1938-2009).
Died 2001
Gwathmey trained as a painter in Philadelphia, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and later at the Art Students League in New York. In 1935 she married the social realist painter and progressive activist Robert Gwathmey, whom she had met at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1929. In 1942 she joined the Photo League, where she studied with Sid Grossman and Paul Strand. Through 1949 she contributed in various capacities to Photo Notes, as writer, reviewer, and editor. Gwathmey spent her summers in North Carolina and Virginia, photographing the labor and housing conditions of the rural South. Her work was featured in several group exhibitions around New York during the 1940s, and in a solo exhibition at the Photo League in 1951. In the early 1950s, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, began investigating progressives, and by mid-decade the agency's harassment of her husband had grown intense. In response, Gwathmey gave up photography, destroyed her negatives, and donated many of her prints to The New York Public Library. She turned instead to textile design and after 1955 enjoyed considerable success. She retired to Amagansett, New York. A photograph by her was included in the landmark Museum of Modern Art exhibition "The Family of Man" (1955). Her work was shown by Glenn Horowitz in his gallery in East Hampton, New York, in 1994, and appeared in the exhibition The Women of the Photo League at Higher Pictures Gallery, New York (2009). Her son was the modernist architect Charles Gwathmey (1938-2009).
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