Samuel Rothbort SOLD

His serious career as an artist began in 1909, when a still life he painted at the time of his marriage showed him the path he was to follow for the rest of his life. The Rothborts settled in Brooklyn, living on Avenue S in Flatbush in what became their permanent home. Samuel Rothbort died in 1971, leaving behind him an impressive collection of sculptures and paintings. Critic Hamilton
Easter Field once summed him up with the following line: "The layman dreams of lords and ladies, but Samuel Rothbort paints the rich reality of the common man." The Lost Wooden Synagogues of Eastern Europe, which was produced by Albert Barry and Florida Atlantic University, used many of Rothbort's paintings in the film to show life in Eastern Europe pre-war. The paintings helped show the viewers what the synagogues looked like in color. The film was shown at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and on Public television in a four part series. The prize-winning documentary, Memories of the Shtetl, which was produced by Harriet Semegram Barry and was a winner at the Edinburgh Film Festival, incorporated 215 of Rothbort's watercolors, and this film and his paintings were the major source for Jerome Robbins' movie and play, Fiddler on the Roof.  Rothbort's works are found in major collections including both the Smithsonian and the Brooklyn Museum.

What we like most about Rothbart's work, as exhibited in his view of Alphabet City on Manhattan's Lower East Side, is his unromanticized energy and feeling for New York as a town of neighborhoods--his painting are always a reminder of the great struggle between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses for the soul of New York--and Rothbort stands with Jacobs. He knows New York is
about where people live and how their energy and passion are channeled through the alleys, streets and avenues where all are connected. There is energy in the streets--fed by the Con Ed power plants along the East River--where generators are empowering immigrants and walk-up buildings to reach for the sky. The city is fueled with the human desire for success and a richer life.
Rothbort's deep sense of New York as a city with 8,000 stories is seen in the multiplicity of people and buildings that interconnect on his canvas.

The figure on the roof is another Rothbort stylistic element--representing his son--the painter Lawrence Rothbort who tragically pre-deceased his father and who is a figura in many of his father's works. He represents the artist unseparated from the metro environment with its tones, noise and masses of color. Surely Rothbort would be pleased to know that the Alphabet City neighborhood, with its Avenues A, B and C, in his painting has resurrected itself with the energy of youth and is once again teeming and alive with artistic potential.