ABSTRACT
Ilise Winderbaum, the first child of Orthodox Jewish parents, attended Hebrew school and was regularly taken by her father to pray in the synagogue; thus, she expected to become a rabbi, but learned at the age of 13 that girls could not hold such a position. Despite her aspirations to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, she married her fiance, Stanley Greenstein, in 1949. In 1950, before her children were born, Greenstein enrolled in a painting class at the Fogg Art Museum. In 1969 and 1970, Greenstein's abstractions were again likened to botanic specimens, cells, and microorganisms by the Newsday critic, Malcolm Preston. Ego, Id, She is one of Greenstein's White Paintings, which are, as the series name suggests, characterized by a preponderance of white and off-white diluted acrylic forms. Greenstein also executed a rectangular composition, A Study for the Ceiling of the Sister Chapel (1973-74; Figure 2.7), which is coloristically similar to her White Paintings.
