With an impressive background in printmaking, Miss Rabinovich turns to painting with a yearning for color and a reluctance to relinquish line. Over flat colored backgrounds she builds up texture with thick ropes of paint scarcely touched by knife or brush, keeping a linear pattern that supplements the subject. Still life and figures are treated with loose-reined imagination and a technical know-how that at times is a virtuoso performance to be enjoyed just for itself. Arbit Blatas (b. Lithuania, 1908) treats subjects beloved of the Impressionists, such as interiors and cityscapes, with the flickering brushstroke of Kokoschka. His genres include portraits of such well-known living artists as Sigmund Menkes, reminding us that people still exist as personalities.
—E. M. Polley
