Uploaded May 2022 | Updated September 2026, 39 minutes ago
Margot S. Neuhaus: Of Darkness and Light
The artistic trajectory of Margot Neuhaus began in Chicago, during her studies of psychiatric social work and her work as a psychotherapist. Within a few years, she was living in Washington D.C. with her husband and two children, deeply engaged in art making. Over the following decades, she created works in a variety of media and took part in exhibitions both in the US and internationally.
As of 2021, she and her husband reside in Ann Arbor, Michigan, closer to their adult children. For both of them, moving from one place to another is simply part of life. Her husband grew up in a German-Jewish family in Brazil. She was born in Mexico, to parents from the Polish-Jewish communities of Krakow and Lvov, respectively. Her mother and father escaped the horrors of World War II. Most of the members of their families did not. Like millions of other Jewish people, they perished in concentration camps.
The work of Margot Neuhaus is inseparable from these aspects of her biography and the influences of the various places she has called “home” throughout her life. Her childhood in Mexico City exposed her to a language and a culture that she felt as her own. Her world changed when her family moved to the South-Eastern part of the USA, and then again when she went to Chicago, before settling in Washington D.C. All of these places, as well as those in Europe connected to her family history have made her particularly sensitive to issues of identity: the qualities that make people feel different from one another, as well as those through which they recognize their kinship. These concerns are woven into her work, both thematically and in terms of her visual language.
One of her most pointed explorations of these ideas is the series In Memoriam, created between 2005 and 2011. Using the language of gestural abstraction, she addresses unspeakable realities: the wanton destruction of lives and the necessary act of remembrance, however painful that remembrance may be. Though these ideas inform many of her works, she has often been reluctant to deal with them explicitly – just as her parents were reluctant to speak of their trauma as survivors. With In Memoriam, she breaks that silence realizing that she has been trying to give visual form to the unspeakable feelings of her parents, which she later recognizes as her own: anguish, fear, rage, but also reconciliation and hope.
The Light Motives find a beautiful counterpart in another cycle of works, titled of silence and dated to 2020. Though Margot S. Neuhaus does not explicate their meanings, the subtle shifts between strokes in pale cream and ochre tones against the white “nothingness” express those meanings more eloquently than words. As the Polish writer Wisława Szymborska would note at one point, at the very moment you pronounce the word “silence” you destroy it. This is also what Margot Neuhaus seems to suggest with these works, inviting us to a contemplative experience, rather than trying to convey a message.
The sculptures of Margot Neuhaus are just as experimental in approach. Her largest installations are Forest and Life Cycles. Her principal material in both of these groups is wood – as raw as her unprimed canvases. The Forest is built from tree trunks cut into sections of varying widths and stacked on top of one another. These totem-like forms seem both artful and organic, as if the artist were simply responding to nature’s own impulses. This sculptural group was shown at the AMA in 1991.
Margot Neuhaus speaks about her working process as a form of play with materials, textures, and patterns. She tries to observe and respond to the medium itself – the language of the wood grain, the surface of the paper, the fluidity of paint. She feels most fortunate when the communication with the material goes beyond herself – and becomes part of larger order. In moment like that, as she also adds, something within her changes, and so does the work itself: “The door has been opened a crack and a bit more light let in.”
Margot Neuhaus wishes to acknowledge the participation of collaborators that have worked with her who appear in the video.
Lovice Weller. Choreographer and dancer. Created and performed "Place" as a response to my sculpture installation, "Life Cycles", invited by The Edith C. Blum Memorial Visiting Artist Program of the Washington Women's Art Center. Glen Echo Park, Md. June 15, 1985 and May 15 -16, 1982.
Karin Abromitis. Multimedia artist. Created and performed "Domestic Snakes" using a theater set I made for that work. The Sanctuary Theater, Washington, D.C. July 17 - 20, 1986.
Anne Dykers. Poet. "with silence". We created a photographic series as a reaction to her poem "Axis Mundi". Takoma Community Center, Takoma Park, Md. 2008.
Marianne Ross. Multimedia artist. Performed improvisational movement in relation to "with silence". Takoma Community Center, Takoma Park, Md. 2008.
Margot S. Neuhaus: Of Darkness and Light
The artistic trajectory of Margot Neuhaus began in Chicago, during her studies of psychiatric social work and her work as a psychotherapist. Within a few years, she was living in Washington D.C. with her husband and two children, deeply engaged in art making. Over the following decades, she created works in a variety of media and took part in exhibitions both in the US and internationally.
As of 2021, she and her husband reside in Ann Arbor, Michigan, closer to their adult children. For both of them, moving from one place to another is simply part of life. Her husband grew up in a German-Jewish family in Brazil. She was born in Mexico, to parents from the Polish-Jewish communities of Krakow and Lvov, respectively. Her mother and father escaped the horrors of World War II. Most of the members of their families did not. Like millions of other Jewish people, they perished in concentration camps.
The work of Margot Neuhaus is inseparable from these aspects of her biography and the influences of the various places she has called “home” throughout her life. Her childhood in Mexico City exposed her to a language and a culture that she felt as her own. Her world changed when her family moved to the South-Eastern part of the USA, and then again when she went to Chicago, before settling in Washington D.C. All of these places, as well as those in Europe connected to her family history have made her particularly sensitive to issues of identity: the qualities that make people feel different from one another, as well as those through which they recognize their kinship. These concerns are woven into her work, both thematically and in terms of her visual language.
One of her most pointed explorations of these ideas is the series In Memoriam, created between 2005 and 2011. Using the language of gestural abstraction, she addresses unspeakable realities: the wanton destruction of lives and the necessary act of remembrance, however painful that remembrance may be. Though these ideas inform many of her works, she has often been reluctant to deal with them explicitly – just as her parents were reluctant to speak of their trauma as survivors. With In Memoriam, she breaks that silence realizing that she has been trying to give visual form to the unspeakable feelings of her parents, which she later recognizes as her own: anguish, fear, rage, but also reconciliation and hope.
The Light Motives find a beautiful counterpart in another cycle of works, titled of silence and dated to 2020. Though Margot S. Neuhaus does not explicate their meanings, the subtle shifts between strokes in pale cream and ochre tones against the white “nothingness” express those meanings more eloquently than words. As the Polish writer Wisława Szymborska would note at one point, at the very moment you pronounce the word “silence” you destroy it. This is also what Margot Neuhaus seems to suggest with these works, inviting us to a contemplative experience, rather than trying to convey a message.
The sculptures of Margot Neuhaus are just as experimental in approach. Her largest installations are Forest and Life Cycles. Her principal material in both of these groups is wood – as raw as her unprimed canvases. The Forest is built from tree trunks cut into sections of varying widths and stacked on top of one another. These totem-like forms seem both artful and organic, as if the artist were simply responding to nature’s own impulses. This sculptural group was shown at the AMA in 1991.
Margot Neuhaus speaks about her working process as a form of play with materials, textures, and patterns. She tries to observe and respond to the medium itself – the language of the wood grain, the surface of the paper, the fluidity of paint. She feels most fortunate when the communication with the material goes beyond herself – and becomes part of larger order. In moment like that, as she also adds, something within her changes, and so does the work itself: “The door has been opened a crack and a bit more light let in.”
Margot Neuhaus wishes to acknowledge the participation of collaborators that have worked with her who appear in the video.
Lovice Weller. Choreographer and dancer. Created and performed "Place" as a response to my sculpture installation, "Life Cycles", invited by The Edith C. Blum Memorial Visiting Artist Program of the Washington Women's Art Center. Glen Echo Park, Md. June 15, 1985 and May 15 -16, 1982.
Karin Abromitis. Multimedia artist. Created and performed "Domestic Snakes" using a theater set I made for that work. The Sanctuary Theater, Washington, D.C. July 17 - 20, 1986.
Anne Dykers. Poet. "with silence". We created a photographic series as a reaction to her poem "Axis Mundi". Takoma Community Center, Takoma Park, Md. 2008.
Marianne Ross. Multimedia artist. Performed improvisational movement in relation to "with silence". Takoma Community Center, Takoma Park, Md. 2008.
