Peri Schwartz
Reverberations: Fifty Years of Still Lifes
On View: April 3–May 2, 2026
Reception: Friday, April 3, 4–6 pm
Making things up bored Schwartz; she wasn’t interested in recording the imaginative associations of her own mind. She craved the sustained attention required of direct observation. It is a marvel, almost a contradiction, that the finished work appears so spacious and free, like an improvisation. Within the rules she imposed on herself, Schwartz found creative liberation.
—Cody Upton, Executive Director of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Peri Schwartz
Peri Schwartz passed away in 2021 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. She was born in 1951 in New York and attended Boston University’s School of Fine Arts and Queens College, where she obtained her Master's of Fine Arts.
Schwartz played with the scale of her studio space using bottles and jars set against the backdrop of large blocks of color, which was then set against a window facing the exterior of her studio in New Rochelle, NY. In paintings, prints, and drawings, Schwartz explained that she focused on composition and the interplay of color, light, and space.