Ellen Berkeblit

Light Green, 2022
Gouache on paper
Unframed: 15 x 11 inches (38.1 x 27.94 cm)
Framed: 18 1/4 x 14 1/2 inches (46.36 x 36.83 cm)

Courtesy of the artist, and Anton Kern Gallery, New York

Selected by Ivy Shapiro 

Ellen Berkenblit

B. 1958, Paterson, NJ

Lives and works in New York

Ellen Berkenblit has been a prominent painter in New York since her emergence in the East Village scene in the 1980s. Her work features recurring themes and motifs, often feminine and animal figures that echo the graphic simplicity of vintage comics but are imbued with the raw intensity of Abstract Expressionism. In Berkenblit’s work, the canvas becomes a site of conflict - between positive and negative space, where colors swell and recede, shapes intersect and obscure, and background and foreground become fluid. Through her formal interrogations, Berkenblit continues to challenge the notion that “painting is dead,” making the case that it continues to be a place in which to capture spontaneity and vitality.
 

Berkenblit’s work is included in the collections of the Hall Art Foundation, VT; Aspen Art Museum, CO; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Cincinnati Art Museum, OH; Allentown Art Museum, PA; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, ME; the Minnesota Museum of American Art, St Paul, MN; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

Recent solo exhibitions include The Clouds Are Luminous, Allentown Art Museum, PA (2026); Flugelhorns, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (2024); Norton, Anton Kern Gallery, New York (2023); Other Shapes at Night, Vielmetter, Los Angeles, CA; and Umberville, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, IL (both 2022). In 2022, Berkenblit was awarded the Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Award in Art, which recognizes outstanding achievement in the visual arts (presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York). In 2019, Berkenblit was commissioned to create a site-specific mural Leopard’s Lane for the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s Atrium Project. In 2018, The Drawing Center commissioned the artist to create her experimental film Lines Roar.