MARCH 26 - MAY 14, 2022 AT CULTURE HOUSE DC

SEEN/UNSEEN: Linda Stein and Mil Lubroth

Exhibition of mixed media by two historically excluded Jewish-American women artists

Jewish-American artists Linda Stein and Mil Lubroth’s late abstract and early contemporary paintings, works on paper, and collages have largely escaped the public eye. Connected by their semi-abstract, colorful aesthetics as well as a shared sense of outsidership and unbelonging, both artists’ styles broke from the artistic norms of the 1960s-1990s. Stein’s and Lubroth’s works, while so similar to each other, are difficult to place within the canon of abstraction, early feminist art, or neo-expressionism.

Was it their stylistic departures from the fashionable art movements of the time; their outsider identities–Stein’s lesbian sexuality and commitment to gender fluidity, and Lubroth’s position as an American woman artist painting Jewish, Islamic, and Western motifs in midcentury Spain; or the exclusion faced by many women artists throughout history, that their bodies of work have evaded more widespread recognition?

In looking closely at Stein’s Profiles series of over 1,000 androgynized, glyph-like faces that all begin below the eyes, and Lubroth’s faceless or half-faced figures lyrically floating through multicultural architectural space, there is a sense that the subjects of these works are meant to be both seen and unseen.

From a social and psychological perspective, to be witnessed fully by Stein’s and Lubroth’s local over-cultures could have come with ostracization, disrespect, and cruelty. Were these artists using figurative abstraction as a mechanism for protected expression? Whether subconscious or intentional, figurative abstraction could have been a means to an end, a formal device for revealing what they wished and blurring the rest. This approach would allow Stein and Lubroth to answer the call of the creative life while mitigating potential inflammation. 

Stein and Lubroth are each overdue for a US exhibition that centers their inventive and enigmatic styles. Though these two artists never met, through the similarities in their work and biographies, a mirror is created across time and space. Seen/Unseen is a conversation about the necessity of breaking convention, the ways artists reconcile the vulnerability of authentic expression with the solace of creative expression, and what it means to be remembered after historical exclusion. 

Seen/Unseen: Linda Stein and Mil Lubroth will be on view March 26-May 14, 2022 at Culture House DC located at 700 Delaware Ave SW, Washington, DC 20024. Gallery hours are Saturdays, 11 AM to 2 PM and by appointment. All artwork displayed is available for purchase. All inquiries for art purchases should be directed to Latela Curatorial: studio@lateladc.com.

We gratefully acknowledge our collaborators The Estate of Mil Lubroth and Have Art Will Travel! Inc., and our sponsors: