She was a protégé and first biographer of Arshile Gorky, and friends with many of the prominent painters of New York at that time, including Willem de Kooning, Richard Pousette-Dart, Kenzo Okada, and José Guerrero.

After her apprenticeship in stone carving with the sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington, in 1927 Schwabacher abandoned sculpture and enrolled in Max Weber's painting class at the Art Students League.

In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.

[8] Her allusion to Greek themes and myths in the Odes series are said to have been influenced by the death of her husband, but this assertion fails to consider her interest in the Surrealism movement.

[9] She uses loose brushstrokes and bold colors to explore themes central to the abstract expressionist movement — Freudian psychology, dream states, and the unconscious.