Among our artists to watch from Armory Week was Danielle Roberts, a recent graduate of the MFA program at Hunter College whose cool, violet-dominated compositions are heating up the art world.
While her distinctive color palette “definitely has brought her attention,” according to namesake dealer Andy Freiser of New York gallery Fredericks and Freiser, the deeper draw is its role in helping Roberts create a compelling “fusion of youth culture and themes of disaffection and alienation.”
The cocktail proved powerful at the Armory Show, as Fredericks and Freiser swiftly found buyers for two new Roberts paintings in its booth. One of them, Out of Reach, was acquired by major Princeton University Art Museum donors Herb and Lenore Schorr. The Schorrs bolster a stable of early Roberts supporters that Freiser already labeled “top tier,” including Wexner Center for the Arts and Columbus Museum of Art trustee Pete Scantland, as well as the Ashti Foundation in Lebanon.
Roberts was recently featured in the group exhibition “Women of Now” at the Green Family Foundation in Dallas and held a solo show at San Francisco gallery Friends Indeed. Her first one-person exhibition at Fredericks and Freiser is set for February 2023. How much further her violet star will have risen by then is anyone’s guess.