Grace Hartigan
Born 1922, Newark, New Jersey
Died 2008, Timonium, Maryland
1942 Newark College of Engineering, New Jersey
Selected museum exhibitions: Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York (2001); Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York (1993); Baltimore Museum of Art (1980); Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore (1967); University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (1963); Documenta, Kassel (1959); Vassar College Art Gallery (1954)
Selected honors: Governor’s Award, Maryland (2006); Life Time Achievement Award, Neuberger Museum (2002); Childe Hassam Purchase Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters (1974); Honorary Life Trustee, Baltimore Museum of Art (1957)
Selected public collections: Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Brooklyn Museum; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis; Smithsonian Museum of American Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center; Whitney Museum of American Art
An artist with a protean approach to her work, Grace Hartigan began her mature work as an Abstract Expressionist, introduced figurative elements into her work in the mid-1950s, and moved between abstraction and figuration throughout the remainder of her long career. Women remained an important theme for her throughout her oeuvre, from Grand Street Brides (1954, Whitney Museum of American Art) and Marilyn (1962) to Theodora (1983, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1983). Mae West’s Bed (1990-91), with its palette of pink, yellow, orange, and black, marks her return to an Abstract Expressionist style, though one with references to the real world. Hartigan’s title suggests the humor and sexual liberation of the actress who once called her bedroom “the most famous in the world.”