GRACE HARTIGAN

Works on Paper

NOVEMBER 14, 2019 - JANUARY 11, 2020

C. Grimaldis Gallery is pleased to present Grace Hartigan: Works on Paper, a survey exhibition which spans from the 1950s through the early 2000s. Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) is renowned for her formative participation in the Abstract Expressionist movement. This exhibition will showcase early mixed media collages, as well as gestural and figurative watercolors that build on the associative mark-making of her abstract paintings.

Hartigan began making watercolor collages, which were unique to her practice, in the 1960s and the medium became so important to her that she called it a “second expression” from the 1980s onward. Watercolor was particularly suitable to her at this time because it resembled the manner in which she was using thin, transparent oil glazes in her recent canvases. Some collages act as studies for or mirrors of Hartigan’s large scale oil works. Articulations Collage (1968) references a series of Anatomy paintings that the artist made in 1968-1969, each which feature Hartigan’s amalgamation of representational images that would come to define her paintings in the mid 60s and 70s. These watercolor collages combine the abstract elements and lyricism of her early work with her desire to be free to work with any subject material.

This exhibition also features Hartigan’s bold move towards representation in her mid to late career, blending figurative content with her signature sensibility of vibrant color, active gesture, and painterly freedom. In many of her watercolors, such as Dromoland Castle (1994) and Kimonos (1999), we see a very complex figure/ground relationship, one which showcases Hartigan’s stylistic awareness and commitment to expressionistic line and composition.

C. Grimaldis Gallery has proudly represented Grace Hartigan’s work and estate since 1979. This will be the artist’s twenty-second solo exhibition at the gallery. Hartigan’s work is represented extensively in private and public collections worldwide including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.