Born in Brooklyn in 1934, Selina Trieff studied at the Art Students League in New York in 1951 with Morris Kantor, at Brooklyn College from 1951 to 1955 with Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko, and in 1955 with Hans Hoffman. The pensive, introspective, character of Trieff’s work, its spirituality and its iconic format have all been attributed to the influence of abstract painter Mark Rothko. Of her early experience at Brooklyn College the artist has said “From Reinhardt and Rothko I learned that art is a philosophical exploration and that art making involves a mysterious process of self-discovery.”

Committed throughout her life to richly painted, figurative imagery, Selina Trieff is among the most extraordinary, though too little known artists of her generation.

While she draws from a model on a weekly basis and regularly depicts highly expressive human and animal subjects in her paintings, Selina thinks of herself as an abstract artist. For her, a painting’s abstract compositional elements are of paramount importance.

Throughout her over forty-year career, Selina Trieff has painted herself, her family and her friends in a highly generalized, abstract format. More than they are portraits of specific individuals, these paintings in their abstraction represent archetypes—images of Everyman and Everywoman—and in their generalization, the specific becomes universal.

There is an opulent theatricality to much of Selina’s work. Often her figures seem perfectly placed on a stage poised to enact the most poignant moment in a complex human drama. …both inviting and defying the viewer to enter the world depicted.”

   Excerpts from retrospective catalogue
   Text by Harold B. Nelson
   Director. Long Beach Museum of Art