Grace Hartigan

American, 1922-2008

Grace Hartigan was a pioneering voice in postwar American art, best known for her fusion of Abstract Expressionism and figurative imagery. Before becoming a professional artist, Hartigan took night classes at the Newark College of Engineering for mechanical drafting while practicing her painting skills under Isaac Lane Muse. Emerging in the 1950s alongside contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Hartigan quickly gained recognition for her brushwork, vivid color palette, and approach to narrative form. Her early success positioned her as one of the few women artists featured in multiple major exhibitions of the era, including MoMA’s landmark show Twelve Americans in 1956.

Working under the pseudonym “George Hartigan” early in her career, she resisted the marginalization of women in the art world while cultivating a deeply personal visual language. Her work evolved over decades but consistently remained rooted in the emotional and psychological intensity that defined the New York School.

Today, Hartigan’s paintings are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art, among others. As a longtime faculty member at the Maryland Institute College of Art, she also mentored a generation of artists, extending her influence beyond the canvas. Her legacy endures as a testament to artistic courage, innovation, and the enduring power of the individual voice in American modernism.