Lost (and Found) Artist Series: Judy Rifka

Artland’s Lost (and Found) Artist Series features artists who were originally omitted from the mainstream art world or largely invisible for most of their careers. At the start of the 1970s, Judy Rifka took the New York art world by storm with her single shapes on plywood paintings. She was a fixture of the New York art scene at the time, connected to figures such as Keith Haring and Ron Gorchov, and she received nothing but praise from major art critics and fellow artists throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s. However, she faded from the art world’s attention by the early ‘90s. Today, Judy Rifka’s work is finally returning to the light. With a major exhibition presenting her work from 1974 to today at Pulpo Gallery, which opens on 24 September and runs through 31 October, Judy Rifka is here to teach the art world a thing or two about pioneering in art and weathering the rapidly-changing times.

Judy Rifka and the Spirit of Art

Judy Rifka has been active in the New York art scene for 50 years. She was drawn to art early, scribbling on the wall of her crib and painting at an easel on the terrace. She studied art at Hunter College in New York, but took a break to hitchhike around Europe and take in as many paintings as she could. This trip eventually led her to London, where she found herself in the middle of a bustling cultural scene, among whom was the folk musician Donovan. Determined to stay in London, Rifka’s plans changed suddenly when she was convinced by American protest singer Phil Ochs to return to the United States since there were exciting things happening in terms of the art scene and the civil rights movement. Back in New York, Rifka decided to study at the Studio School, an important move where she absorbed everything like a sponge. It was there that she met fellow artist David Reed, with whom she travelled to the Southwest and painted in the desert for several months. Abstract Expressionism was a great influence at the time, and during this period, inspired by the vast desert space, Rifka started to think about space, informed by Malevich.

Understanding Space

Rifka explains how Malevich was concerned with trying to understand space through painting. What Malevich was after, she later learned, was exploring the convex hull. This, in mathematics, is the shape as seen from above, created by where the boat’s hull meets the water’s surface. It is an irregular shape, created by a perimeter of shapes. Rifka started creating convex hulls blooming back and forth over each other, as such eliminating the space. Inspired by Malevich and Hans Hofmann, who spoke about space in terms of colour and the ideas of push, pull and relational space, she started investigating form and space. She was more interested in developing form than in relating spatial arrangements to four edges on a canvas. The focus was on understanding how to see space and how to draw through the image.   

Her studies in dance also began to be important in her work. She was concerned with the idea of making a mark and deciding where and how to make the other mark, thereby making a decision to go somewhere. Rifka describes the process in an interview with Whitehot Magazine: “So I take the paint, go from one point to another, and then it becomes a body. It’s the way a body creates itself or a pseudopod moves. So I create a form based on the space, that’s why there’s no space within that shape, because the space has turned to paint. Then I take these movements, which are generally two, sometimes three, and I have knotted them back and forth to create built-up space.”

Single Shapes on Plywood

Rifka’s initial spatial explorations took place in the late ‘70s when she began creating her celebrated single shapes on plywood. “Her single shapes on plywood are among the most important paintings of the decade,” wrote Rene Ricard in his 1981 Artforum article The Radiant Child. These works show movement of lines building up into shape and morphing fields. Rifka used plywood because she felt it was like a floor for her shapes to dance on. As opposed to creating compositions focused on how the viewer would relate to the exterior rectangle, Rifka allowed her compositions to move forward, often creating shapes that ignore the exterior and forcefully emanate off the picture plane. The single shapes on plywood were first shown at Artists Space and the Whitney Museum.

From these abstract, formalist works of the ‘70s, Rifka developed towards more figurative work, adding people and subject. She also began discovering new materials, working for example with oil on linen, or green blackboard paint on canvas. A lot of her work was based on dance, so she started including her signature figures, defiant, bold and very much on the move.