Rosemarie Castoro (1939–2015)

In 1979 Rosemarie Castoro installed “24 Flashers” made of “choreographic wrestled steel” on the theatre plaza at Artpark in Lewiston, New York. Visual Arts Director David Katzive said they hoped the work would merge the visual and performing arts, for which Artpark was renowned. Visitors could stand inside of the sculptures, thereby making them interactive rather static backdrops.

Although associated with New York Minimalists, Rosemarie Castoro also considered herself to be a Futurist—like the early 20^th-century Italian artists whose works created a visual language for movement, light, and speed. While earning her B.F.A. at Pratt Institute, she was inspired by dance and choreography, enjoying that momentary suspension in space when she “leapt through the air and continued to remain up there…” She told Lucy Lippard in ARTFORUM (1975): “I felt a self-propelled air-stretch. It was a way to leave this earth, to bring coherence to reality, to find a path again, to deepen the grooves and push the forest of the half blind.” She worked primarily in painting and drawing until the late 1960s, when she made a series of thin aluminum sculptures. In the early ‘70s, her Free-Standing Wallstransitioned her paintings into the third dimension.

Castoro was an internationally respected artist presented in hundreds of exhibitions worldwide, and a recipient of numerous awards. 24 Flashers were among her most successful late works—thus becoming a very desirable acquisition to represent the artist in the collection, linking also with the Center’s Artpark Archives.

—NW