In Memorium, American Abstract And Figurative Painter Grace Hartigan

'Grand Street Brides' [1954]
Oil on canvas 72" x 102.5"

"Ms. Hartigan’s move to Baltimore coincided with a drastic shift in artistic fashion, as Pop Art and Minimalism eclipsed Abstract Expressionism. Out of the spotlight, Ms. Hartigan embarked on what she later recalled as “an isolated creative life.” For decades she painted in a loft in a former department store and taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The college created a graduate school around her, the Hoffberger School of Painting, of which she became director in 1965. She taught at the school until retiring last year [at the age of 85].

William Grimes "Grace Hartigan, 86, Abstract Painter, Dies" New York Times November 18, 2008

Image credit: (c) Estate of Grace Hartigan via www.mica.edu. Copyright controlled.

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“Her art was marked by a willingness to employ a variety of styles in a modernist idiom, to go back and forth from art-historical references to pop-culture references to autobiographical material,” said Robert Saltonstall Mattison, the author of “Grace Hartigan: A Painter’s World” (1990).