Ghitta Caiserman-Roth
(1923 - 2005) RCA

G. Caiserman-Roth Biography
(1923 - 2005) RCA

Born in Montreal, Quebec, she started painting very young and took instruction from Alexander Bercovitch. At the age of 12 she exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. With the intention of following her mother's footsteps as a designer she took her first formal training at the Parsons School of Design, New York, where she received a post-graduate scholarship to study in Europe in 1941. She then attended the New York Art School under Moses Soyer and later the Art Students' League under Harry Sternberg. She studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and in the late 1940's opened an art school with Alfred Pinsky and exhibited with him at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Pinsky and Ghitta created a large mural (16' x 6.5') for The Fine Children's Wear, a clothing factory in Montreal showing the use of its productions by children. Robert Ayre wrote of this mural in “Canadian Art” in 1950. Mrs. Caiserman-Roth is basically interested in people and she could be classified as a social realist in the tradition of Ben Shahn and the Soyer brothers who no doubt had influence upon her. Non-objective painting has held little interest for her. Robert Ayre has referred to her as a painter of “Joyous extravagance letting her creatures loose in a luxuriant growing world...” While Dorothy Pfeiffer described her nudes, torsos and figures as having been “...stated simply and without trace of sentimentality” and “pulsate with the texture of flesh and blood and the more abstract qualities of weight and density...”

Her work appeared in “Maclean's” (a special issue in Quebec) in the section “Eight artists paint their Quebec” showing one of a series of her canvases based on children's discoveried. Paul Duval noted her lithograph work in his book “Canadian Drawings and Prints” and her watercolour in “Canadian Water Colour Painting”. Norah McCullough related to her palette to Braque and Picasso and notes, “...She paints outward from a dark background to greys, orchres and white...then freshened the surface with touches of sharp green, orange, pink and violet...This method is very effective in giving life and breath to the static or indolent figures which people her canvas.” Robert Fulford made notes on her work for “Canadian Art”in a survey of the work of 24 Canadian artists in 1961.

Lawrence Sabbath in a 1964 review of her work stated, “Where other painters,...assert themselves in the importance of their theme by boldness of design, strength of colour and imaginative treatment, Mrs. Caiserman-Roth s content to only partially open the curtain on her stage...You see once again the young girls in the summer poses, dressed in their cat-like curled up attitudes of relaxation, the solemn middle-aged men with their sad, resigned looks, and the lovers timidly naked before each other...The world the artist looks on and records is pleasant and tender.”

She won an O'Keefe Art Award in 1951 and during that year travelled to France and Italy. In 1952 she gave a series of 10 lectures in Montreal entitled “Turning Points in The History of Art” and later that year she studied in Mexico at the Institute Allende on a scholarship from that institution.

She has shown her work in most of the major cities in Canada and is represented in the Vancouver Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, Saskatoon Art Centre, London Public Library and Art Museum, Willistead Art Gallery of Windsor, Art Gallery of Hamilton, National Gallery of Canada, Hart House University of Toronto, Department of Education Ontario, Smith Falls Public Library, Maclean-Hunter Publishing Co. Ltd., C.I.L. House Montreal, Great West Life Winnipeg, Queen's University, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Mount Allison University, Helena Rubinstein Collection, Sir George Williams University, Confederation Art Gallery Charlottetown, University of Western Ontario.

She was a member of the Federation f Canadian Artists (1944), Associate Royal Academy (1956), Canadian Society of Graphic Art. She has taught at Queen's University Summer School, Mount Allison Summer School and Sir George Williams University. She received a Canada Council Senior Fellowship in 1962.

Source: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume I: A-F", compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1977