BIOGRAPHY
After studying briefly with local Newark painter Isaac Lane Muse (1906–96), Grace Hartigan moved to New York in 1945. There she was profoundly influenced by Jackson Pollock’s one-man exhibition held in 1948 at the Betty Parsons Gallery, and her earliest works (1948–52) were large-scale abstract canvases resembling those of Pollock and Willem de Kooning. These works were included in the important New Talent (1950) and Ninth Street (1951) exhibitions. In 1952, Hartigan departed from non-representational art and made free variations upon Old Master paintings, as well as collaborating with the poet Frank O’Hara to produce 12 poem / paintings entitled Oranges. These experiments culminated in a series of imaginative portraits, shop window scenes, still-lifes, and cityscapes created between 1953 and 1960; in works such as City Life (1956), Hartigan captured the excitement and complexity of modern urban life while embodying the gestural style of the Abstract Expressionists.
In 1959, Hartigan married and moved to Baltimore, which she made her permanent home, and continued to expand her range of subjects and styles. Her themes varied from movie stars to modern interpretations of historical figures, such as the foppish Young Louis (1983). Her style alternated between lyrical and colorful stained canvases, paintings splattered with pigment, and deliberately complex and discordant brush-drawn works. Generally associated with the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, Hartigan, in both her methods and her themes, took her art beyond the limits that such a description would suggest.
In 1959, Hartigan married and moved to Baltimore, which she made her permanent home, and continued to expand her range of subjects and styles. Her themes varied from movie stars to modern interpretations of historical figures, such as the foppish Young Louis (1983). Her style alternated between lyrical and colorful stained canvases, paintings splattered with pigment, and deliberately complex and discordant brush-drawn works. Generally associated with the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, Hartigan, in both her methods and her themes, took her art beyond the limits that such a description would suggest.
RESOURCES
1. Grace Hartigan and Frank O'Hara ("Oranges")
2. Grace Hartigan and James Schuyler ("Flashes")
3. Grace Hartigan and Barbara Guest ("Palm Trees" and "From Eyes Blue and Cold")
4. Works of art by Grace Hartigan in the Crystal Bridges Museum main collection:
Rough, Ain't It ; Clark's Cove
1. Grace Hartigan and Frank O'Hara ("Oranges")
2. Grace Hartigan and James Schuyler ("Flashes")
3. Grace Hartigan and Barbara Guest ("Palm Trees" and "From Eyes Blue and Cold")
4. Works of art by Grace Hartigan in the Crystal Bridges Museum main collection:
Rough, Ain't It ; Clark's Cove
REFERENCES
Robert Saltonstall Mattison. "Hartigan, Grace." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web.<http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T036782>.
Artwork behind title: Hartigan's Mothers (detail)
Robert Saltonstall Mattison. "Hartigan, Grace." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web.<http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T036782>.
Artwork behind title: Hartigan's Mothers (detail)
