Photo: Nancy Eisenfeld
Cynthia Bloom Namenwirth died July 12, 2008 at the Hebrew Home in West Hartford Connecticut. Her last place of residence was the home she loved and summered in on Corn Neck Road just past The Block Island Club for over the past 35 years.. Cynthia studied art at Washington University graduating with highest honors and won one of the first Fulbright awards to travel Europe where she met Carol Haerer, Peter Saul, Sam Francis, and Joan Mitchell - she also, found her Husband J. Zvi Namenwirth at this time who died on B.I in 1993. Cynthia has exhibited her paintings and works on paper at the Stedelik Museum in Amsterdam and the De Cordova Museum in Mass as well as Pace Gallery run by Arnold Glimcher in Boston. Her resume is extensive. Later in her career she showed on the Island at The Square One Gallery, The Encore Gallery and Coastal Design Gallery. The Island served as inspiration for the over 2500 works on paper of landscapes and flowers, and 500 oils on canvas, some enormous, that she produced from the late 50’s to the present. Stylistically she might be erroneously grouped with the 2nd generation abstract expressionists, but developed a highly personal spin that combined observational study with improvisation, eastern brushwork and highly experimental mixed mediums. In some cases using the dried flowers, butterfly’s, and metallic pigments that distinguish the work from stereotypical tourist fare. Her paintings are in many public and personal collections and available through her estate currently represented by artMovingProjects. One can see images at artmovingprojects.blogspot.com.
A good bye to Cynthia will take place at her house at 10.30 Sunday, July 27th. She is survived by her sister Joyce Karst, her son Aron Namenwirth his wife Nancy and daughter Jane. As those who knew her will tell you she was filled with intelligent perception, knowledge and the capablity of profound understanding. My mom was one of a kind and we will miss her. Donations/help for fixing her house appreciated.
2 comments:
My condolensces Aron. I just googled your mother's name because just today, the 16th, I purchased a beautiful abstracted landscape by her at a flea market. I'm saddened to find that she has passed.
First, may I offer my condolences on the loss of your mother.
I would like to suggest adding your mother's name and work to a great American archive of artists, the Art Inventories Catalog at the Smithsonian Institution. It's an open database for anyone worldwide to contribute information about any work they own created by an American artist.
This is a link to their page so that you can see the tremendous amount of information now available about American artists. Cynthia Bloom Namenwirth would be a great addition to this database, for anyone in the world to see.
http://siris-artinventories.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?profile=ariall#focus
If for some reason the url does not work, a simple Google search for Smithsonian Art Inventories will bring you to the right location.
--Bill Staples
Assistant Librarian,
Auerbach Art Library,
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
bill.staples@wadsworthatheneum.org
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