Susan Rothenberg: “The Weather” Opens at Hauser & Wirth

Susan Rothenberg at Hauser & Wirth: A Portrait in Atmosphere

Hauser & Wirth New York honors the legacy of one of America’s most enigmatic painters with “The Weather”, a deeply intimate exhibition of works by Susan Rothenberg, on view now. As the gallery’s first solo presentation of Rothenberg’s art, this focused show spans more than five decades of creative evolution—featuring 14 canvases, many of which have never been publicly exhibited. Together, they offer a portal into the artist’s emotional and psychic terrain.

A pioneer of the late 20th-century return to figurative painting, Susan Rothenberg first captured the art world’s attention in the 1970s with her iconic horse paintings—monochromatic, monumental forms vibrating with primal energy. But “The Weather” reaches far beyond these early breakthroughs. Viewers will encounter both landmark works and deeply personal pieces that Rothenberg lived with privately, building a rich, non-linear arc through her career.

The exhibition’s title evokes Rothenberg’s unique method of creating psychological tension through paint—the “weather” she conjured on canvas with visceral brushwork and spectral forms. Works like Outline (1978), bearing her own ghostly palm prints, and Red Head (1981), a nod to the artist’s tools and presence, reveal how intimately she imprinted herself onto her surfaces. In later paintings such as Las Blancas (1996–1997), inspired by a near-death experience, and Untitled (Green Hands with Band) (2018), the tension between urgency and resignation is palpable. Here, Susan Rothenberg’s signature touch—both literal and figurative—emerges as a central subject in itself.

Susan Rothenberg’s Life, Legacy, and “The Weather”

Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1945, Susan Rothenberg earned her BFA from Cornell University and studied in Europe before settling in New York City in 1969. Over the next 20 years, she developed an artistic vocabulary that broke open Minimalism’s hard edges with figuration, gesture, and symbolism. Despite her outsized influence, Rothenberg’s work was the subject of just two major museum retrospectives during her lifetime—at the Albright-Knox in 1992 and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2009.

Rothenberg’s paintings now reside in prestigious public collections worldwide, including MoMA, LACMA, the Met, the Tate, and the Whitney. Yet her work has always remained defiantly personal. Whether painting horses, fragmented human limbs, or abstract forms shaped by her New Mexico surroundings, Susan Rothenberg sought to give form to intangible states—loss, ecstasy, memory, violence—through the rawness of pigment and composition.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Hauser & Wirth Publishers is releasing “Susan Rothenberg. The Weather”, a richly illustrated monograph. Curated by Alexis Lowry, the publication includes newly commissioned responses from writers and artists and a detailed biography that charts Rothenberg’s uncompromising path through the art world. The book, like the exhibition, functions as both tribute and lens—refracting Rothenberg’s fiercely individual voice through decades of persistent, painterly searching.

“The Weather” opens at Hauser & Wirth New York on September 4 and runs through October 18, 2025, offering guests an unfiltered encounter with Rothenberg’s work—one that feels as emotionally vivid and unpredictable as the forces of nature she so often mirrored.