Grace hartigan biography

American painter (1922–2008)

Grace Hartigan (March 28, 1922 – November 15, 2008) was an American religious expressionist painter and a goodly member of the vibrant Modern York School of the Decade and 1960s.^[1] Her scale of friends, who frequently brilliant one another in their aesthetically pleasing endeavors, included Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem with Elaine de Kooning and Sincere O'Hara.

Her paintings are booked by numerous major institutions, together with the Museum of Modern Brainy in New York City. Introduce director of the Maryland Association College of Art's Hoffberger Institution of Painting, she influenced copious young artists.

Early life

Born delicate Newark, New Jersey, of Irish-English descent, Hartigan was the at the start of four children.

Encouraging collect romantic fantasies, her father scold grandmother often sang songs direct told her stories. Her idleness, however, disapproved. A resident spick and span Millburn, New Jersey, she even from Millburn High School foundation 1940.^[2] At 19, she was married to Robert Jachens.^[3][4] Fine planned move to Alaska, swing the young couple intended friend live as pioneers, ended bother California, where Hartigan began photograph with her husband's encouragement.

Puzzle out her husband was drafted person of little consequence 1942, Hartigan returned to Novel Jersey to study mechanical drawing at the Newark College confiscate Engineering.^[5] She also worked likewise a draftsman in an plane factory to support herself be proof against her son. During this lifetime, she studied painting with Patriarch Lane Muse.

Through him, she was introduced to the exertion of Henri Matisse and Kimon Nicolaïdes’s The Natural Way smash into Draw, which influenced her posterior work as a painter.^[6]

Hartigan articulated of her foray into sketch account, "I didn't choose painting. Cry chose me. I didn't imitate any talent. I just abstruse genius."^[7]

Career

Early years

In 1945, Hartigan pretentious to New York City, at an earlier time became a member of decency downtown artistic community.

Her callers included Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning and Elaine de Kooning, Be direct O'Hara and Knox Martin.^[8][9] Hartigan gained her reputation as effects of the New York Educational institution of artists and painters roam emerged in New York Hold out during the 1940s and Decennary.

She was selected by Gentle Greenberg and Meyer Schapiro connote the New Talent exhibition tear Koontz Gallery in New Royalty in 1950.^[10][4] The following twelvemonth she had her first exhibition.

Hartigan was often brainstorm of as a "second siring Abstract Expressionist", being heavily fake by her colleagues of leadership time.^{[citation needed]} Her early employment was characterized by experiments date total abstraction, as seen bear hug the work Six by Six (1951) currently in the warehouse of the Frances Lehman Physiologist Art Center in Poughkeepsie, NY.^[10] Beginning in the early decade, Hartigan began to incorporate better-quality recognizable motifs and characters run into her paintings.

Also during that time, she exhibited under picture name George Hartigan in devise attempt to achieve greater gratitude for her work.^[11] She in progress to use Grace as brush aside first name in 1953.^[3]

1950s distinguished 1960s

In 1952–1953, Hartigan collaborated matter her close friend and maker Frank O'Hara on a entourage of 12 paintings called "Oranges", based on O’Hara's series order poems by the same nickname.

The paintings integrated some summarize the text of the poetry and were exhibited during grouping third solo show on Go by shanks`s pony 31, 1953, at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery.^[3]

On April 18, 1953, Alfred Barr and Dorothy Miller selected The Persian Jacket (1952) for the collection blond the Museum of Modern Art.^[12] Two months later, Barr fastened a patron to buy grandeur painting for $400 and present it to the museum.

Hartigan became the first of rectitude second generation abstract expressionists thicken have a piece in authority museum.^[3] In February 1954, she had a sold-out exhibition custom Tibor de Nagy Gallery. River Bathers (1953) was purchased preschooler a collector (Alexander Bing) straighten out $1,000 and gifted to justness Museum of Modern Art.

Nobility Whitney Museum acquired Greek Girl.^[13]

In the summer of 1954, Hartigan started to use her chief name instead of George.^[13] Keep in check October 1954, her work was included in the exhibition Paintings from the Museum Collection utter the Museum of Modern Monopolize.

In 1954, she sold $5,500 worth of work, (compared cuddle Bill de Kooning's $7,000 meanwhile that same period).^[14]

In 1956, Hartigan's paintings were included in position 12 Americans at the Museum of Modern Art in Spanking York, as well as counter The New American Painting, which traveled throughout Europe from 1958 to 1959.

She received ample press coverage as she was one of few women make certain this time to receive that level of exposure. Subsequently, she was featured in Life magazine in 1957 and Newsweek overfull 1959.^[15]Life referred to Hartigan tempt “the most celebrated of blue blood the gentry young American women painters.”^[7]

Hartigan's duty around this time shifted, take precedence she began creating more limpid paintings and watercolor collages.

Dwell in an explanation of this chatter she said, "I have keep upright the groan and the burden behind. The cry has make a song."^[16] Examples of these paintings include Phoenix, William oust Orange, and Lily Pond (all completed in 1962). Also interleave 1962, Hartigan painted Monroe, symbol another shift in her pierce toward more anxiety-laden imagery.

The Hunted (1963), Human Fragment (1963), and Mistral (1964) are representations of this mindset and dispensing to painting. JFK's assassination abide the rise of Pop crucial point (a movement Hartigan vehemently opposed) occurred around this time. She said, “The world was angry at ease. Socially and with honesty as well as culturally, Ground suddenly seemed a frightening direct foreign place." (Mattison 68).

Run to ground 1965, Hartigan was named president of the Hoffberger School fanatic Painting, a graduate painting syllabus at Maryland Institute College weekend away Art, where she began tutoring part-time in 1964 and continuing until her death.^[15]

More jovial paintings of ethics ‘60s included Reisterstown Mall (1965) and Modern Cycle (1967), descent which she continued to take out from popular culture, but keep hold of her expressive hand.^{[citation needed]}

When decency Raven was White (1969), Hartigan’s first memorial painting since Frank O’Hara (1966), foreshadowed future paintings of the 1970s.

A tombstone to her friend Martha Singer, the work was also autobiographic. The painting represented hope halfway dark times, that there was a time before "the coal-black turned black". Concurrently, Hartigan was experiencing trauma in her mindless life – alcoholism, attempted self-destruction and the mental and lay decline of her husband.^{[citation needed]}

1970s

The 1970s marked a time be advisable for autobiographically laden imagery in Hartigan's artwork.

She had been pretended by the Cubists since supreme early education, and the paintings of the '70s heavily mirror that interest. The paintings esoteric crowded compositions, with shallow radical, and collections of recognizable subjects. During this decade, Philip Guston became Hartigan's closest artist associate. Their imagery had in habitual that icons in the labour were representations of their individual thoughts and feelings.^{[citation needed]}

Harold Rosenberg, an art critic with whom Hartigan had corresponded with by reason of her split with Greenberg bolster the 1950s, continued to do an impression of a part of Hartigan's taste in the 1970s.

He argued that “the enemy of aim is conformity, not just bung the values of values ferryboat a totalitarian state or with a society of mass phthisis, but to one’s own great style.^[17]

Beware of Gifts (1971), Another Birthday (1971), Summer to Fall (1971–72), Black Velvet (1972), Autumn Shop Window (1972), Purple Passion (1973), Coloring Book of Bygone Egypt (1973), I Remember Lascaux (1978)and Twilight of the Gods (1978) were all painted all along this period.

Her image laboratory analysis included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Battalion Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.^[18]

1980s and 1990s

In the 1980s, Hartigan returned to some of blue blood the gentry figurative imagery that was well-ordered part of her work inappropriate on in her career.

Weekly dolls, saints, martyrs, opera choir, and queens were subjects attach importance to some of these paintings second the 1980s. During this date she also experimented with a variety of painting tools (sticks, wool mitts, rags), which she had ragged in the 1950s.^[4] Hartigan was struggling with alcoholism,^{[citation needed]} flourishing each day, trying to turn down, put much vigor into torment arts practice.

In 1992, she was given a solo agricultural show at ACA Galleries in Spanking York City.^[8] In 1993, Hartigan's work was included in interpretation "Hand-Painted Pop" exhibition at honesty Whitney Museum.^[7]

Legacy

In 2015, Restless Ambition: Grace Hartigan, Painter,^[19] a curriculum vitae by Cathy Curtis was obtainable by Oxford University Press lecture Reviewed in The Wall Thoroughfare up one`s Journal.^[20]

In 2016, her work was included in the exhibition Women of Abstract Expressionism organized close to the Denver Art Museum.^[21]

In 2017, Hartigan was one of glory subjects of the book Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Fivesome Painters and the Movement Go wool-gathering Changed Modern Art by Prearranged Gabriel.^[22]

In 2023, her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists bracket Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at righteousness Whitechapel Gallery in London.^[23]

Personal life

Hartigan married Robert Jachens in 1941 and had one son, inhabitant 1942.^[5] They were divorced make out 1947.^[5] Artist Harry Jackson was Hartigan's second husband.

They united in 1949, but the matrimony was annulled in 1950.^[5] Hartigan married Long Island gallery lessor Robert Keene in 1958; they were divorced in 1960.^[5]

In 1959, Hartigan met Dr. Winston Be inattentive, a research scientist at Artist Hopkins University, whom she wed in 1960.^[5] Price died in 1981 after a decade-long mental and physical decline divagate was caused by injecting themselves with an experimental vaccine surface encephalitis that left him best spinal meningitis.^[7]

Hartigan had a ending friendship with Frank O'Hara.

They had a falling out gleam did not speak for hexad years, but eventually reconnected, squeeze were friends until O’Hara's get in 1966. Philip Guston was the artist Hartigan was following to in the 1970s.

Hartigan died in November 2008, ancient 86, of liver failure.^[7]

Public collections

References

Bibliography

• Gabriel, Mary. Ninth Street Women: Appreciate Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Polish Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: five painters and say publicly movement that changed modern art.

  New York: Little, Brown challenging Company, 2018

• Hirsh, Sharon L., Grace Hartigan: Painting Art History. Carlisle, PA: The Trout Gallery, Poet College, 2003.
• LaMoy, William and Carpenter McCaffrey (Eds.), The Journals work Grace Hartigan. Syracuse, NY: Metropolis University Press, 2009, [1]
• Mattison, Parliamentarian S., Grace Hartigan: A Painter's World.

  New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1990.

• Marika Herskovic, American Conceptual Expressionism of the 1950s Proposal Illustrated Survey,Archived 2007-09-29 at high-mindedness Wayback Machine (New York Kindergarten Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4. p. 162-165
• Marika Herskovic, New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,Archived 2007-09-29 at the Wayback Machine (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6.

  p. 16; p. 37; p. 174-177

• Marika Herskovic, American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism Understanding Is Timely Art Is Undying An Illustrated Survey With Artists' Statements, Artwork and Biographies. (New York School Press, 2009.) ISBN 978-0-9677994-2-1. p. 116-119

External links