Ethel Fisher's paintings are full of light and love for rich surfaces, and of oriental feeling for color. Dynamic movements vitalize her forms and make her paintings flow from area to area until the surface is brimming with life. But beneath this dynamic flow is a basic structure that contains the movement and gives meaning to her form. Her paintings are filled with joy for living.
The depth of her investigations over the last three years - the facades of city buildings - becomes apparent only when there is an opportunity to see examples from the entire serires.... Though every painting has an iconlike power in its frontality, [when]...hung side by side facing the viewer, the angle from which each was seen by the artist varies, placing the viewer in a situation of perplexing and fascinating contradiction.
Compositionally Fisher's works are strong and immaculate, combining the grid structure of Mondrian with an expressionistic interest in paint quality. The iconlike frontality and shallow space add to the mood of commanding silence. A painterly painter, she uses relatively loose brushwork... the color of each shape is composed of flickering strokes of several hues. Diagonal shafts of light begin to dissolve the hard concrete in ways reminiscent of cubism and impressionism.
[Fisher's] work is characterized by a great mastery in the disposition of planes and in the employment of color.