From the transformative to the ephemeral, the birth and death of a bright green butterfly is reimagined in Roberta Fineberg's photo based on a poem by the 13th Century Persian poet Rumi who believed: ‘Whatever you know, or don’t - only love is real’.
Tamed, 2017 by Roberta Fineberg is a 13” x 19” archival pigment print on baryta paper in an edition of 5 with 1 a/p (artist's proof). It is signed, titled, dated on recto (front of photo) by the photographer.
For the contemporary still life photograph of a butterfly the artist explores the natural and man-made world in which a caterpillar breaks free of its skin for a metamorphosis. Hatching into an exquisite creature, a vibrant colorful butterfly sips nectar from flower to flower during its short sweet life.
Tamed is in a series of butterflies by Roberta Fineberg with one of the works "Union" included in Butterfly: Exploring the World of Lepidoptera (Phaidon, 2025).
Provenance: RF Studio
In the artist's words: "The Butterfly series explores transformation through color and symmetry. Each piece begins with a photograph that I have made of a butterfly. The photographs are an encounter with natural history and my inner vision—part observation, part meditation—I invite the viewer in to pay attention to the exquisiteness of the anatomy of a butterfly."
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Artist's Bio:
Roberta Fineberg (RF) is a New York-based visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores serendipity, experimentation, and the evolution of ideas through color, material, and process. Working across photography, drawing, installation, video, and abstraction, she investigates themes of impermanence, play, memory, and transformation. Embracing chance as an essential creative force, her work invites viewers to reconsider the relationships between observation, experience, and the physical world.
Fineberg’s exhibitions include Women of Spirit at Zurcher Gallery, New York (2025); Gallery128, New York (2025); Collecting: An Art Fair at Westbeth Gallery, New York (2024); Sojourner Gallery, New York (2022); Phyllis Harriman Gallery (2020, 2022); CADAF Online Art Fair (2020); Gallery122, New York (2018); Curate NY (2013); and Photos, Femmes, Féminisme at Paris Photo (2010). Her work is held in public and private collections, including portraits of women writers at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand in Paris. In 2022, her photograph Double Helix was featured in Sotheby’s Contemporary Discoveries preview exhibition in New York.
Recent commissions include twenty pigment prints from her Roman God(dess) series for the Orient Express Hotel in Rome (2025). Her work Union, from the Butterfly Series, was selected for Butterfly: Exploring the World of Lepidoptera (Phaidon, 2025), and in 2026 three works from the series were released as curated digital editions on Sedition.
RF began her career in Paris in the 1980s as an editorial photographer and freelance writer. Her photographs have appeared in international publications including Le Monde, Paris Match, Ms., Jeune Afrique, among others. She is also the author of City Riders: A Story of Riding and Friendship (Howell/Macmillan, 1997).
