Charlotte Schatz: Industrial Strength
November 16, 2024 – March 9, 2025
Beans Gallery
James A. Michener Art Museum
138 S. Pine Street
Doylestown, PA 18901
215.340.9800
A sculptor and painter who lived and worked most of her professional life in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Charlotte Schatz (1929-2023) explored industrial forms through non-traditional materials and colorful, painted compositions that were considered unconventional for women artists at the time. Charlotte Schatz: Industrial Strength investigates the visual and material connections between Schatz’s sculpture and paintings as she documented the region’s changing industrial landscape.
After raising a family and pursuing a fine arts degree as an adult, Schatz created enigmatic, abstract sculptures from metal and unusual materials like PVC pipes, mirrors, Plexiglas, and polyfoams, inspired by the work of minimalist artists Judy Chicago, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and Lucas Samaras. In the late 1970s, she became aware of the danger of chemicals she worked with and slowly transitioned to painting and drawing. Her later industrial-themed body of work was a response to the decaying factories she viewed, and often trespassed, in Philadelphia’s Old City and Northern Liberties neighborhoods. These compositions recall earlier, Precisionist depictions of industrial structures by Charles Demuth, Elsie Driggs, and Charles Sheeler, but with a vibrant Pop aesthetic. According to the artist, “form and color are my primary concerns.” In a later body of work, Schatz digitally layered drawings of water towers and other industrial forms to create new compositions she called “combines.” This exhibition celebrates a formidable artist, feminist, and social activist, who embraced industrial themes and materials typically associated with male artists in the second half of the twentieth century.
This exhibition is guest curated by Cheryl Harper.
