Grace Hartigan | Biography | Hollis Taggart Galleries

Grace Hartigan (1922-2008)

Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1922, second-generation Abstract Expressionist Grace Hartigan signed her work “George Hartigan” until 1951. She received critical attention in the early 1950s as a participant in two major group exhibitions: “New Talent,” organized by art-world heavyweights Clement Greenberg and Meyer Schapiro, and the “Ninth Street Show.” She secured representation by the newly opened Tibor de Nagy gallery, a leading venue for the younger New York School artists. A prominent member of the New York art scene, Hartigan counted Willem de Kooning, Larry Rivers, Franz Kline, and Joan Mitchell as friends.

Throughout the late 1950s, Hartigan’s work appeared in several notable museum exhibitions as well as in international shows in Japan, Brazil, Belgium, and Germany. This critical and institutional attention culminated in May 1959 when Newsweek magazine devoted its arts section to Hartigan and noted the strength of her paintings in the important traveling group show, “The New American Painting.” Hartigan’s works of the 1950s and 1960s reveal the innovative ways in which she tackled the legacy of Abstract Expressionism and engaged in the new painterly movements surging around her.

Hartigan left New York for Baltimore in 1960, prompting another period of experimentation and freedom in her work. She began combining an airier, more transparent painting technique with brighter colors.