Marguerite in 2A, Night

Romberger's work is essentially a visual anthropology of the East Village and Lower East Side of New York, and his pastel genre scenes capture the dingy grandeur of this wonderful neighborhood. He is basically an urban romanticist, and his hazy, lazy, daylit drawings suggest a latter-day John Sloan. His sensitive pastels carefully document the physical character of the area with a moody naturalism. The aging tenements seem to sway in gauze-filtered sunlight. Garish and lively, his night scenes, with their solemn blackish-blue hue, have a visual bite that is distinct from the vaporous daytime views. Romberger's drawings focus intently on the cityscape. When present, his figures seem to be used as accents; they are conceptual social highlights in these oddly miasmic representations of Manhattan's hard, dense and crazily jumbled urban reality. His drawings manage to capture the prosaic social interaction, the emotional character and the magnetic attraction of this legendary New York City area. —Calvin Reid, Art in America