Grace Hartigan

Grace Hartigan was born on March 28, 1922, in Newark, New Jersey. In 1942 she enrolled at the Newark College of Engineering, NJ, and supported her family by practicing mechanical drafting in an aircraft factory, while making watercolors on the side. Introduced to the work of Henri Matisse from a book loaned by a fellow student, she developed a lifelong interest in modern art.

Hartigan moved to New York after World War II and began to engage in the world of Abstract Expressionism, befriending Milton Avery, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko. After seeing a Jackson Pollock exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery in January 1948, Hartigan began to form her own, inimitable Abstract Expressionist sensibility. 

Hartigan had her solo debut exhibition at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York City, in 1951. Hartigan's paintings were included in 12 Americans (1956) at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, and in The New American Painting, which was co-organized by MoMA and the United States Information Agency and traveled to eight European cities from 1958 to 1959. She was one of few women painters to receive that level of exposure, and was featured in Life magazine in 1957 and Newsweek in 1959.

Hartigan moved from New York to Baltimore in 1960. From 1965 until her death in 2008, she served as a teacher at Maryland Institute College of Art and director of the school's Hoffberger School of Painting.

Hartigan's work was included in the seminal 9th Street Art Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, New York City (1951), as well as other major group exhibitions at the Jewish Museum, Guggenhein Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; Documenta, Kassel, West Germany; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She was the subject of solo exhibitions at Baltimore Museum of Art; Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; and Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY. 
—Adapted and excerpted from https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/grace-hartigan, accessed 9-15-2021

Artist Info


Born

1922

Newark, NJ

Died

November 15, 2008

Baltimore, MD

Gender

Female

Nationality

American

Heritage

European American

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