francis frost

Gabriele Roos was born in Hamburg, and emigrated to the US with her family in 1938. She studied at Cooper Union, NY, and received her BA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her MA from the University of Michigan.

Roos's work in the 1960s was painterly and abstract expressionist-inspired, which evolved towards the end of the decade into a flatter, cleaner, hard-edged style. In the 1970s her painting involved bold colors and precise linear forms, a sense of movement or dynamism often imparted by the frequent diagonals. These works, increasingly larger in size, were painted now not in oil paint but in acrylic, and often with the use of an air-brush. Towards the end of the decade, the surface of the paintings, often a circle or tondo, include more broken forms; chevrons or small diagonal strips of varying width and color moving rhythmically across the surface of the canvas.

Roos exhibited widely in the 1970s, including solo exhibitions at Westbroadway Gallery, NY in the early 1970s, and at Grace Borgenicht Gallery, NY, from 1975 to 1979 (where she was the first woman artist the gallery represented). Roos also exhibited in group shows at Betty Parsons Gallery and Susan Caldwell Gallery, NY, and was included in exhibitions at City University, NY; New York Cultural Center; University of Texas Art Museum; Bronx Museum; Museum of Modern Art, NY; and New York University. Her work is in numerous private and corporate collections both in this country and abroad. Since the early 1980s Roos has been involved mainly with sculpture, using wood, plaster and found-objects to create large-format abstract works.