Judy Rifka, video artist, book artist and abstract painter, is a multi-faceted artist who has worked in a variety of media in addition to her painting and printmaking. She was born in 1945 in New York City and studied art at Hunter College, the New York Studio School and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Her printmaking includes themes of the Italian Renaissance with church facades and According to critic Ann Shengold, "Rifka's work has been characterized by an agitated, often thick, black line which has become a kind of shorthand for her subjects: figures, architecture, and everyday objects. Her iconography describes the city she resides in, the places she travels to, and the events that are reported in the media. The work is quite frequently laced with visual and verbal puns." Rifka's work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; New York Public Library, New York City; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts; University of North Carolina, Greensboro; Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; and Staatliche Museum, Berlin, Germany. Her one-person exhibitions include New York City venues of Franklin Furnace, in 1977, and Printed Matter, in 1980; Museum fur Kultur, in Berlin and Hamburg, Germany, in 1981; Knight Gallery, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1984; and an installation in Gracie Mansion, the residence of the Mayor in New York City, in 1985. A catalogue of a show in which Rifka participated, "Nine from Carolina: An Exhibition of Women Artists", was published in 1989 by the combined efforts of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the North Carolina State Committee. |
