Sylvia Carewe (1906-1981) was born in New York City to Russian immigrant parents, Louis and Esther Kerewsky; she changed her surname to "Carewe" in 1930. Ms. Carewe was educated at Columbia University and studied further in New York at Atelier 17 with Yaso Kuniyoshi, with Hans Hoffman in New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts, and at the New School for Social Research. In October, 1944, she married Marvin Small (formerly Smallheiser, and executive for Carter's Little Liver Pills) and bore one child, John Marvin, in June, 1947.
Prior to her marriage, during World War II, she worked as an advertising copywriter and artist for agencies in New York. Before her first one-woman show in 1947, she was a prolific abstract artist, producing tapestry designs for the Aubusson, France, weavers, making felt banners, working in traditional artistic media (watercolors, oils, lithographs and pastels) and creating collage reliefs and what she termed "blown paintings," assemblages (predominantly of children's toy components) overlaid with spray paint.
After her first one-woman show in Poughkeepsie in 1947, Ms. Carewe opened in New York City at the ACA Gallery in 1948. She had some twenty other American one- woman shows and her works hung in many group shows across the United States as well as in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Sylvia Carewe's works are represented in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum, Musée de l'Arte Moderne, Paris, Brandeis University, the Butler Art Institute, Howard University, the Tel Aviv Museum and the National Museum in Djakarta, Indonesia. Her work has been described by French critics as "violent, colorful art, in hard contrasts, not exempt from cold lyricism." ["Les Girls," Time, 11 Nov 1957]
Ms. Carew was nearly as productive as a poet and writer, producing both poetry and short stories.
From the guide to the Sylvia Carewe Papers, 1941-1972, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)
