On view Dec 9, 2022 – March 19, 2023

Opening Reception & Annual Holiday Market on December 8, 2022, 5-8 pm

Sophy Regensburg: A Retrospective will be the first museum exhibition for the artist, whose career is long overdue for a comprehensive survey. In 1952, Regensburg began painting at the age of 67 while living on the Upper East Side in New York City. She was renowned for her vivid scenes depicting objects culled from her everyday life – a pitcher of tulips, a plate of shucked oysters, a slice of cherry pie.

In her youth Regensburg studied drawing at The Chase Art School under William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, yet her mature style belies that of her celebrated teachers. Her highly organized compositions, defined by a flattened perspective and layers of patterning, reveals Regensburg’s preference for saturated color, crisp forms, and an obsessive attention to detail.

Unfairly categorized as a naïve painter during her lifetime, a label the artist openly abhorred, our retrospective will present Regensburg as an important modernist of the twentieth century.  Her vibrant landscapes and charming still-lifes belong in the same conversation as the lush scenes of Post-Impressionist Henri Rousseau and the nostalgic tableaus of Pop painter Wayne Thiebaud. Throughout the course of her twenty-year career, Regensburg produced over 500 works of art and had fifteen solo exhibitions at prominent New York City galleries, including Babcock Galleries, FAR Gallery, and Martha Jackson Gallery.

In addition to the five paintings drawn from the permanent collection of the Stamford Museum & Nature Center, Sophy Regensburg: A Retrospective will feature over fifty additional paintings, drawings, and prints on loan from U.S. private collections and museums, exhibited together for the first time.