Grace Hartigan
(1922 - 2008) |
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Bright colors, painterly style, member of The New York School Art Work
| Name: |
Grace Hartigan |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
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| Nationality: |
American |
| Birth: |
1922 |
| Death: |
2008 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Bright colors, painterly style, member of The New York School |
| Medium: |
Oil, mixed media |
| Method: |
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| Style: |
Abstract Expressionism |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
painter
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Biography
Hartigan was an American painter who in 1950, became known as an Abstract Expressionist, producing rich, warm paintings. In the mid-1940's she left her husband, placed their son, Jeffrey, in the care of his parents and moved back to Newark, where she trained in mechanical drafting and took painting lessons with Isaac Lane Muse. After moving to the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1945, she became part of the postwar New York artistic scene.
Grace Hartigan gained her reputation as part of the New York School of artists and painters that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and '50s. She was a lively participant in the vibrant artistic and literary milieu of the times, and her friends included Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Frank O'Hara, and many other painters, artists, poets, and writers. She was the only woman artist in the Museum of Modern Art's legendary The New American Painting exhibition which toured Europe in the late 1950s. In Grand Street Brides (1954), one of several early paintings that attracted the immediate attention of critics and curators, she depicted bridal-shop window mannequins in a composition based on Goya's Royal Family.
Later paintings incorporated images taken from coloring books, film, traditional paintings, store windows and advertising, all in the service of art that one critic described as intensely personal. I Gradually, she abandoned figuration and her work became wholly abstract, varying from a heavily dramatic to a lighter, more lyrical mode.
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Samples of Work
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