Artworks

Hedda Sterne American: 1910 – 2011 An active member of the New York School, Hedda Sterne is perhaps still remembered chiefly for her appearance in a now iconic photograph for Life magazine, published in 1951, of the ‘Irascibles’ – a group of artists who protested against the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s failure to include abstraction in its exhibitions of American art. Sterne, notably, is the only woman in the image. In fact, over the course of a long and storied career, Sterne, who was born in Bucharest, Romania and fled to the US in 1941, created an extensive body of work that intersected with some of the most important movements and figures of the twentieth century. Early international recognition came when her collages, included in a Paris exhibition in 1938, were singled out for praise by Jean Arp. Through him, Sterne was recommended to Peggy Guggenheim, and was included in five exhibitions at Guggenheim’s The Art of This Century gallery. Sterne was also included in the exhibition First Papers of Surrealism in 1942, organized by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp in New York. Betty Parsons, whose work is also included in this exhibition, first showed Sterne in 1943. She remained with the Betty Parsons Gallery until Parsons’ death in 1982. Sterne described her work as a process of exploration and discovery and it can be considered as a visual diary of her experiences and philosophies, often with an attendant spiritual dimension, as they evolved over time. Vertical Horizontal # 7 ½, 1963, one of a number of significant works from the 1960s that portray multiple horizons within a single image, was completed during a residency in Venice, and is among her most non-figurative works of the period. Untitled, 1982, from Sterne’s Patterns of Thought series comprises a grid-like structure whose internal divisions offer a rhythmic interplay of reflection, refraction and spatial depth.