Judith Bernstein
Active Figuration
Judith Bernstein’s Active Figuration series (2000) consists of ink-on-paper drawings created through a trance-like process, exploring the subconscious. The gestural images address the political injustices of their time, depicting figures in existential angst and turbulent relationships. “It’s fun, but it’s dead serious”.
Since receiving her MFA from Yale in 1967, Judith Bernstein has developed a reputation as one of the most unwaveringly provocative artists of her generation. For over 50 years, her work has explored connections between the political and the sexual. Steadfast in her cultural, political, and social critique, Bernstein surged into art world prominence in the early 1970s with her monumental anti-war and feminist charcoal drawings of penis-screw hybrids—one of the artist’s most recognizable motifs. Bernstein has been awarded numerous accolades throughout her career and has been the subject of major solo exhibitions at museums in New York and abroad. Her monumental 9 x 12 feet charcoal drawing Horizontal was purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY in 2023.