Grace Hartigan - American Abstract Expressionism

American artist Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) was a second-generation abstract expressionist. A member of the New York avant-garde and a close friend of artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, Hartigan was deeply influenced by the ideas of abstract expressionism. However, as her career progressed, Hartigan sought to combine abstraction with representation in her art. Although this shift garnered criticism from the art world, Hartigan was resolute in her convictions. She held fast to her ideas about art, forging her own path for the duration of her career.Hartigan’s first significant exposure to modern art came when a fellow draftsman offered her a book about Henri Matisse. Instantly captivated, Hartigan knew right away that she wanted to join the art world. She enrolled in evening painting classes with Isaac Lane Muse. By 1945, Hartigan had moved to the Lower East Side and immersed herself in the New York art scene.

A busy abstract surface is characteristic of Hartigan’s style, but whereas in much of her other work she allows imagery to form, here Hartigan intersperses her painterly strokes with selections of text taken from Frank O’Hara’s “Oranges No. 1.” The poem is one in a collection of twelve published in 1949 by O’Hara, in response to which Hartigan produced twelve canvases, each featuring excerpted text from the corresponding poem.

Throughout her life, Hartigan resisted the strictures of artistic fashion. The abstract expressionist movement shaped her early career, but she quickly moved beyond it and began inventing her own styles. She is best known for her ability to combine abstraction with representational elements. In the words of critic Irving Sandler, “She simply dismisses the vicissitudes of the art market, the succession of new trends in the art world. … Grace is the real thing.”

Grace Hartigan - The Second Generation Abstract Expressionist

"Hartigan was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1922. As a child, she was close to her grandmother and her aunt, both of whom encouraged her creativity with stories and folktales. Hartigan was later involved with her high school drama program and wanted to be an actress. She married at 17 to Robert Jachens because, she claimed, he was the first boy to read poetry to her. Wanting to escape their narrow upbringing, the couple headed for Alaska to homestead. They got as far as Los Angeles before they ran out of money and Hartigan found out she was pregnant with her only child, Jeffrey. She took a few painting classes before they returned to New Jersey. When Robert was drafted to fight in World War II, Hartigan lived with his parents and got a job as a mechanical draughtsman to support herself and her son. She was sent to the Newark College of Engineering for on-the-job training. It was during this period, after she and her husband separated, that a friend introduced her to the works of Henri Matisse and she began taking art courses from a local artist named Isaac Lane Muse.

 Grace Hartigan, a second-generation Abstract Expressionist linked historically to artists of the first, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, who forged a new form of painting based on bold gesture and experimental brushwork. Within the movement, she was respected for her commitment and thick skin, and her striking paintings reflect this attitude. Though she built her early career upon complete abstraction, in 1952 Hartigan began incorporating recognizable motifs and characters from various sources into her art, and moved fluidly between figuration and abstraction throughout her long career. For this reason, her work is often considered to be a precursor to Pop art.
Hartigan's belief that painting must have "content and emotion" continued throughout her career. Even though her work is often associated with Pop art, Hartigan disliked the idea of mass manufacturing that Pop embraced, preferring the emotion generated by the evident hand of the artist.
Hartigan's best-known works combine the abstraction of her early work with recognizable images from everyday life or motifs from art history, particularly from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The distinction between abstraction and figuration is often blurred by her experimental brushwork and lack of shading."(theartstory.org)