(1939–2015)
In 1979 Rosemarie Castoro installed “24 Flashers” made of “choreographic wrestled steel” on the theatre plaza at Artpark in Lewiston, New York. David Katzive, who was visual arts director, said they hoped the work would merge the visual and performing arts, for which Artpark was renowned. Visitors could stand inside of them, thereby making them interactive rather than serve as a static backdrop.
Although associated with New York Minimalists, Rosemarie Castoro also considered herself to be a Futurist—like the early 20th-century Italian artists whose works created a visual language for movement, light, and speed. While attending high school in Brooklyn when she received a scholarship in painting to study at the Museum of Modern Art. Subsequently, 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 continued in an interview with 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 Walls that incorporated graphite, gesso, and marble dust transitioned her paintings into the third dimension. Castoro was an internationally respected artist presented in hundreds of exhibitions worldwide, and a recipient of numerous awards.