Grace Hartigan

B. Newark, NJ, 1922
D. 2008

Grace Hartigan was a significant member of the New York School who variously drew on art history, everyday life, and poetry as she moved across figuration and gestural abstraction.

She began her career as a mechanical draftsperson for a new Wright Aeronautical factory, attending Newark College of Engineering at night. After moving to New York City in 1946 she became enmeshed in a community of artists including Milton Avery, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell and Larry Rivers, among many others. A turning point in her career came with her inclusion in the landmark New Talent exhibition at Kootz Gallery, curated by art historians Clement Greenberg and Meyer Shapiro. She was featured in the 1951 Ninth Street Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture and was the only woman represented in the Museum of Modern Art’s influential international exhibition, The New American Painting (1958–59).

In 1952, Hartigan began to fuse her animated, abstract brushstrokes with figures and other subjects drawn from life, as well as art historical referents such as Peter Paul Rubens and Diego Velásquez. She also established relationships with poets, which influenced the subjects of her work.

In 1960 Hartigan moved to Baltimore and in 1967 became the director of the Hoffberger Graduate School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Moving beyond pure abstraction, her later works examine popular culture, art history, visual culture and personal biography while maintaining the gesture and techniques of Abstract Expressionism to formulate a unique style all her own.

She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the Life Time Achievement Award, Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY (2002); Governors Award in Baltimore, MD (2006) and honorary degrees from Goucher College, Lafayette College, Maryland Institute College of Art, Moore College, Towson State University and Dickinson College.

Her work is in the permanent collection of many museums including Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, MA; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Carnegie Institute Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Hirshhorn Museum of Art, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; The Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; M.I.T., Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; St. Louis Art Museum, MO; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN and Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.