About the artist:

Esther Gilman was a multi-talented woman. She grew up as an artist imbibing what emanated from the New York art world during its golden age of the 1950's and 1960's. Keenly aware of herself as an artist at a time and in a place where there was much to learn, she thrived. Esther Morgenstern was born August 13th, 1922 in Cleveland, Ohio to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. Even as a child, spirited and independent, she began drawing. On Sunday afternoons she would stretch out on the living room floor and copy from the funny papers. Later she attended art classes at the Young Communist's League. After graduating from high school, she spent a year at the Cleveland School of Art, and then transferred to the University of Wisconsin and later the University of Michigan. Enrolled in classes directed for the most part toward the commercial arts, uninspired, she left school in 1944, one year short of graduation. Disillusioned with what had been her major interest, she went to New York to study dance. Despite the consternation of her father, who insisted she place herself under the care of a Freudian analyst, she installed herself in a $25 per month apartment on Morton Street in Greenwich Village where she studied modern dance under the pioneer Afro-American choreographer Pearl Primus. She also took up Flamenco and classical dance, trying out, unsuccessfully, for the chorus of Brigadoon on Broadway. At the same time she continued to paint, studying privately and drawing at the Art Student's League; at this time her greatest influences were Arshille Gorky, as well as the Mexican modernists Rivera and Tamayo. During one period she developed a serious interest in ceramics, but "the itch to paint" followed her all her life. Esther said later in an interview, "I didn't care much about the accumulation of money, possessions, or following old traditions." She was surrounded by young, striving, creative individuals in various fields, becoming close friends with Wally Cox, then a jeweler, struggling actor and roommate of Marlon Brando, whom Esther dated briefly. In 1947 she made her first of many journeys to Mexico. Around the same time she met a village neighbor, struggling poet Richard Gilman whom she married in 1949. Living on a small allowance from her father and Richard's meager earnings as a writer, the two traveled extensively to Mexico and decided in 1951 to escape the oppressive atmosphere of McCarthyism and move to Europe. After traveling through France they settled for a time in Florence in an apartment facing the Pitti palace, but all was not as the young couple hoped it would be. Finding it too difficult to adapt to other cultures and languages, they returned to New York and in 1952 briefly separated. At the same time, in a crisis of religious faith, they both converted from Judaism (actually atheism) to Catholicism, becoming part of an avant-garde artistic community that included close friends of the famous monk and writer Thomas Merton. Though doing so with serious intentions, they eventually experienced a gradual " loss" of faith, or at least loss of faith strong enough to keep them actively in the church, and they ultimately renounced Catholicism. Richard wrote about this period in his memoir "Faith, Sex and Mystery" in the 1980's. The iconography of Catholicism, however, remained a constant theme in Esther's work. In 1956, she had her first solo exhibition in New York, and from that time considered herself a professional painter. She also began studying etching and in 1963 published the first of three children's books, "A Little Girl and Her Mother", written by Beatrice de Regniers. The other two were "Nothing But A Dog", a feminist story about a girl and her love of dogs, and "Little Boat Lighter Than A Cork" written by Ruth Krauss. She also produced illustrations for such journals as Jubilee and Commonweal, illustrated an autobiography for her father and worked on several books that were not published. In 1958 her only child, Nicholas, was born and in 1964 she separated permanently from Richard Gilman. She married again, briefly, to the actor Richard Orzel. In the early 1960's, through Richard Gilman's work as a theatre critic, Esther became involved in theatrical set design. She worked on many productions at the Cafe La Mama, the Judson Church and other avant-garde venues, and was informally associated with the ground-breaking group the Open Theatre. Some of the outstanding productions she worked on were Megan Terry's Viet Rock, and Tom Eyen's Miss Nefertiti Regrets which introduced the public to Bette Midler. She later designed sets for productions of Sandy Wilson's The Boyfriend and The Mikado in Massachusetts. Also, around 1963, she began work on a series of monumental collage/constructions using found objects, mostly culled from her travels in Mexico; few of these pieces, unfortunately, survive, although one was shown in an exhibition in Germany in the 1990's. In 1967 Esther, her husband and Nicholas moved to a large 19th century farmhouse in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where she lived for four years. At this time she was working on collages, prints and abstract expressionist paintings. Overwhelmed with the responsibility of owning a country house as well as her feeling of isolation living in a rural area, she returned to New York in 1971. She moved into a large apartment on 88th Street and Riverside Drive where she lived the rest of her life. Esther had been collecting pre-World War I photographs in the flea markets of Europe, the United States and Mexico, originally using the photos and "found objects" to create collages. But she found their dimensions constricting. Then came the Women's movement that in Esther's words "broke me open. I already had nineteenth and early twentieth century photos that tended to be about women's lives. I turned to watercolor to enlarge and combine the photos with personal artifacts. Suddenly my paintings were statements on the human condition". She exhibited this body of work, which would prove to be her largest, many times, including a one-person show at the Razor Gallery in Soho in 1978 and a large retrospective in Cleveland in 1988. In the early ‘80's, Esther began spending time in Paris, returning for five consecutive years to the same left-bank apartment. In 1984 she had a show of her illustration work in St.Amand Montrand. Having always been more comfortable working figuratively, despite long detours into abstraction in the ‘50's and ‘60's, she returned to classes at the Art Student's League of New York to study academic figure drawing and painting, and produced many fine figure studies through the ‘80's. In 1985, she discovered she had cancer which, after a long and valiant battle which included many alternative therapies, proved fatal. She died at home on March 12th, 1989. During the last several years of her life, she had returned to her earliest interest in Mexican culture and art. The painting that marked the completion of her life's work was a portrait of an indigenous woman from Chiapas. Her son Nicholas, an artist who now lives in Mexico, organized a retrospective exhibition in San Miguel de Allende in 1998. *I wish to acknowledge Soledad Santiago and the late Dr. Lynette Seator for their help in writing this biography. EDUCATION New York University, M.A. University of Michigan, B.S. Cleveland School of Art Art Student's League of New York Colombia University STUDIO WORKSHOPS & SUPPLEMENTARY STUDY Contemporary Graphich Workshop, New York Greenwich House Pottery Polikof School of Stage Design, New York SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS Museum of Modern Art, Young Printmakes Exhibition, N.Y., 1950's Roko Gallery, N.Y. 1950's Jersey City Museum, 1956 National Academy of Design, N.Y.,1950's Roland de Aenille Gallery, N.Y., 1960's Laurel Gallery, N.Y., 1960's Gertrude Stein Gallery, N.Y., 1961 The Contemporaries Gallery, N.Y., 1960's Riverside Museum, N.Y., 1960's American Watercolor Society, N.Y. 1960's Northwest Printmakers, Portland Oregon, 1960's Rochester Festival of Religious Arts, Rochester N.Y., 1970 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Sweet Briar, Va.,1974 Elaine Starkman Gallery, N.Y. 1980's Razor Gallery, N.Y., 1977,78 ONE PERSON EXHIBITIONS Bodley Gallery, New York, 1961 Little Gallery, Detroit, Michigan, 1962 Simons Rock College, Great Barrington, Ma., 1971 A Show Of Hands, New York, 1973 Cleveland Institute of Music, Pavillion Gallery, 1973 Pentagram Gallery, Charlottesville, Va/, 1975 Razor Gallery, New York, 1978 Washington Square East Gallery, New York, 1981 Americana in Soho, New York, 1981 Salle Polyvalente, St. Amand Montrand, France, 1983 University Of Wisconsin-Madison, 1987 Jewish Community Center, Cleveland Ohio,1988 Galeria Duo Duo, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, 1998 PROFESSIONAL HONORS & AWARDS The Painters and Sculptors Society of New Jersey, Bronze Medal of Honor for Watercolor, 1956 Robert Boardman Award, Painters and Scultpors Society of New Jersey, first prize for Watercolor, 1956 Award for Outstanding Children's Book Illustration for 1963 American Institute of Graphic Arts Exhibition,1965 Rochester Festival of Religious Arts, 1st Award in Graphic Arts, 1970 Fellow at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, 1974 Fellow, Cummington Community for the Arts, 1975 ILLUSTRATION Jubilee Magazine (illustrations for stories) 1950's I Have Considered My Days by Joseph Morgenstern, Ykuf Publishers 1964 The Little Girl and Her Mother , Vanguard Press, 1963 Nothing But A Dog, The Feminist Press, 1972 Little Boat Lighter Than A Cork, Magic Circle Press, 1973 Women Artist News, 1983 Women in the Arts Bulletin, 1983 STAGE SETS AND DESIGN Writers Stage, Van Dam Playhouse. Judson Memorial Church, Cafe Cino, Open Theatre, La Mama: Viet Rock, by Megan Terry, La Mama, NY Keep Tightly Closed in a Cool Dry Place, by Megan Terry, La Mama It's Almost Like Being, by jean Claude Van Italie, Van Dam Playhouse,NY Soon, Jack, November, by Sharon Thie, La Mama Miss Nefertiti Regrets, by Tom Eyen, La Mama Rumplestiltskin at Rockefeller Children's Theatre, NY The Boyfriend, by Sandy Wilson, Stockbridge, Ma. The Mikado, by Gilbert & Sullivan, at Simons Rock College, Great Barrington, Ma. REVIEWS Arts Magazine, 1978 Art News New York Times, 1961 Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1973 The Berkshire Eagle, 1971 The Westsider, 1973 Toulane Drama Review Atencion San Miguel, 1998 El Independiente, 1998