I cannot stand that every time people talk about you they immediately want to place you in a box–influenced by so and so…But you do not derive directly from anyone. – Hedda Sterne
Hedda Sterne was born Hedwig Lindenberg on August 4, 1910, in Bucharest, Romania. Upon her high school graduation in 1927, at age 17, she attended art classes in Vienna, then had a short attendance at the University of Bucharest studying philosophy and art history before she dropped out to pursue artistic training independently. She spent time traveling, especially to Paris, developing her technical skills as both a painter and sculptor. Hedda Sterne married a childhood friend Frederick Sterne in 1932 when she was 22. In 1941 she narrowly escaped a roundup and massacre of Jews at her apartment building, when she fled to New York to be with Frederick. In 1944 she remarried Saul Steinberg (cartoonist for The New Yorker) and became a U.S. citizen.
Sterne is best remembered as the only woman in a group of Abstract Expressionists known as The Irascible Eighteen, a group who protested the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s policy towards American painting of the 1940s. Sterne was, in fact, the only woman photographed with the group by Nina Leen for Life magazine in 1950 (featured picture in today’s post). Members of the group besides Sterne included: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jimmy Ernst, Jackson Pollock, James Brooks, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Theodoros Stamos, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko.
- “New York, N.Y., No. X,” by Ms. Sterne, from 1948.
At the time of her death, possibly the last surviving artist of the first-generation of the New York School, Hedda Sterne viewed her widely varied works more as in flux than as definitive statements. In her artistic endeavors she created a body of work known for exhibiting a stubborn independence from styles and trends, including Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, with which she is often associated.
Sterne’s works are in the collections of museums including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, also in Washington D.C.
Hedda Sterne died in April of this year. She was 100 years old. Read her New York Times obituary.
My idea being that for the sublime and the beautiful and the interesting, you do not have to look far away. You have to know how to see. – Hedda Sterne
2 Comments
It’s always amazing to me to read about artists who buck artistic trends. In fact, the phrase “artistic trend” is something of an oxymoron to me – having lived on the fringe and not participating in most trends my whole life, art seems to me to be the area where anything goes – but historically, it certainly is anything but that. The flow of creativity would, one would think, be conducive to more open-mindedness, but it doesn’t seem to have been throughout most of history. And the attitudes toward female artists have been abysmal. I have the Art app on my iTouch, and it has galleries and bios for around 150 artists from the 1300s to about 1950. Wanna guess how many of them are women?
Wherever did you find this hidden jewel? Although I think I know why you picked her gor “Woman of the Week” She was “…known for exhibiting a stubborn independence from styles and trends.” Seems that so many of the amazing women you choose have such longevity. Absolutely love “New York, N.Y No. X” Great choice for this post.