Rochelle Blumenfeld is a modern American painter. She creates her paintings in the abstract style. Among her artworks are the memories of her childhood in Pittsburgh and the canvases inspired by ballet.
Background
Rochelle Blumenfeld was born on June 19, 1936, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States to a family of Lawrence Reznik, a sign painter, and Rose Fairman.
Blumenfeld’s paternal grandparents, Samuel and Rachel Reznik, immigrated from the Soviet Union to Pittsburgh about 1904 and founded there a dry goods store called Sam Reznik & Sons.
Rochelle’s maternal grandfather, Harry Fairman, was an artist and created decorations for the wealthy local people in the East End of Pittsburgh. It was he who encouraged Rochelle to study art and painting.
Rochelle Blumenfeld has a brother whose name is Alan.
Education
Rochelle Blumenfeld began her artistic education at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh when she was in the 5th grade.
While in high school, Rochelle attended an advanced painting class at the Carnegie Tech, known nowadays as Carnegie Mellon University. In 1954, she became its student. Blumenfeld had studied there for one year and left the institution to get married.
Later, she joined a painting class of the Young Men and Women's Hebrew Association. There, she received painting lessons from an artist Samuel Rosenberg who had a great influence on her future artistic career.
Rochelle Blumenfeld started her professional career as an artist in 1958 when she presented her artworks to the public for the first time. The same years, she was made a member of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh. She took part at their exhibitions, among which was the show in honour of Andrew Carnegie at his birthplace in Dunfermline, Scotland.
Blumenfeld’s debut solo exhibition was organized in the 1970s at the Carnegie Museum of Art. In 1976, the painter demonstrated her canvases at the Bicentennial Exhibition called Americans in Paris which was organized in the capital of France.
The series of paintings dubbed Dance paintings appeared in 2000 after the visit of the Alvin Ailey’s ballet Revelations which inspired the painter a lot. Four years later, the canvases were exhibited at the One Oxford Centre in Pittsburgh during the artist’s solo show.
The next series titled Hill District Paintings was created by Blumenfeld in 2011 as a response to her grandchildren who wanted to know more about her childhood. The artworks reflect the Hill District of Pittsburgh and its local people during the Great Depression and the World War II. The presentation of these canvases took place in 2017 at the American Jewish Museum situated within Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh.
During her artistic career, Rochelle Blumenfeld exhibited her artworks in various museums and art galleries of Europe and the United States, including John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, Grogan Gallery of Fine Art (2007, 2008) in Tucson, Arizona, Steinway Gallery in Orlando, Florida, Juried Biennial Westmoreland Museum of American Art (2010) in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and others.
Quotations:
"Life continually alters its course on an unknown journey, and coping is not always easy."
"I like a large canvas because it gives me room to reach and to stretch. I like the act, the physicality of painting and I try to reflect that in my work."
Membership
Associated Artists of Pittsburgh
,
United States
1958
Connections
Rochelle Blumenfeld became a wife of Irving Blumenfeld, a co-founder of Gateway Paint Company in Pittsburgh, in 1955. The couple had three children and five grandchildren.