In collaboration with Culture House, Latela Curatorial is delighted to present Seen/Unseen: Linda Stein and Mil Lubroth, an exhibition of mixed media by two historically excluded Jewish-American women artists. The exhibition is on view from March 26 through May 14, 2022, on Saturdays from 11 am – 2 pm and by appointment. Additional programming will be announced during the course of the exhibition.

Jewish-American artists Linda Stein and Mil Lubroth’s late abstract and early contemporary paintings, works on paper, and collages have largely escaped the public eye. Connected by their semi-abstract, colorful aesthetics as well as a shared sense of outsidership and unbelonging, both artists’ styles broke from the artistic norms of the 1960s-1990s. Stein’s and Lubroth’s works, while so similar to each other, are difficult to place within the canon of abstraction, early feminist art, or neo-expressionism.

Was it their stylistic departures from the fashionable artistic movements of the time; their outsider identities – Stein’s lesbian sexuality and commitment to gender fluidity, and Lubroth’s position as an American woman artist painting Jewish, Islamic, and Western motifs in midcentury Spain; or the exclusion faced by many women artists throughout history, that their bodies of work have evaded more widespread recognition?

In looking closely at Stein’s Profiles series of over 1,000 androgynized, glyph-like faces that all begin below the eyes, and Lubroth’s faceless or half-faced figures lyrically floating through multicultural architectural space, there is a sense that the subjects of these works are meant to be both seen and unseen.

From a social and psychological perspective, to be witnessed fully by Stein’s and Lubroth’s local over-cultures could have come with ostracization, disrespect, and cruelty. Were these artists using figurative abstraction as a mechanism for protected expression? Whether subconscious or intentional, figurative abstraction could have been a means to an end, a formal device for revealing what they wished and blurring the rest. This approach would allow Stein and Lubroth to answer the call of the creative life while mitigating potential inflammation.

Stein and Lubroth are each overdue for a US exhibition that centers their inventive and enigmatic styles. Though these two artists never met, through the similarities in their work and biographies, a mirror is created across time and space. Seen/Unseen is a conversation about the necessity of breaking convention, the ways artists reconcile the vulnerability of authentic expression with the solace of creative expression, and what it means to be remembered after historical exclusion.

About the Artists

Linda Stein (b. 1943) is an intersectional Jewish, feminist, LGBTQ artist, activist, educator, and writer, who has been making art for five decades. Her works are in the collections of Elizabeth Sackler, Gloria Steinem, Loreen Arbus, Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy, the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Smith College, Rutgers University, and the United States Institute of Peace, among others. Stein’s art archives are held at Smith College, and her education archives are now the property of Penn State University. Her work has been studied by a range of scholars, including Joan Marter, Jann Matlock, and Gail Levin. Stein is also the Founding President of the non-profit Have Art: Will Travel! Inc. (HAWT) for gender and social equity.

Mil Lubroth (1926-2004) was an American-born artist who until her passing lived and worked in Madrid, Spain. Her colorful, semi-abstract paintings, which often combined Jewish, Arab, and Christian symbolism, were described as “light and music, subtlety and suggestion, full of energy and joy” by Catherine Coleman, a curator at the Reina Sofia Museum. Her annual open studio, held every November, was an important celebration of the Spanish art scene.

About Latela Curatorial

Latela Curatorial is a full-service art advisory studio based in Washington DC that specializes in the weaving together of conceptual art projects and curatorial services for art collections. Through intuitive arts leadership, LC’s core mission is to continuously question how “support” is defined in the art world and advocate on behalf of the artist and arts workers. LC’s attitude is to nurture with a matriarchal approach: creating generative (rather than solely transactional) opportunities for artists, collectors, and communities alike. Latela Curatorial’s holistic approach includes organic placemaking, public art, large-scale art procurement, exhibition curation, collections management, and community workshops.

The gallery is open to the public from March 26 to May 14, 2022, and is open to the public each Saturday from 11 am – 2 pm and by appointment. All inquiries for art purchases should be directed to Latela Curatorial.