Mary Heilmann

United States artist Mary Heilmann, born in 1940 and died in 2026, has developed a practice in which painting is conceived both as a language to be questioned and as a pictorial experience. After training in ceramics and sculpture, she received a Master of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1968, and then moved to New York. Her approach has been described as a critique of painting that remains fully pictorial. She brings Abstract Expressionism and geometric abstraction, two idioms of abstraction, into play together, and in particular makes the grid a form capable of being distorted. This mobility of the grid is one of the formal features identified in her work, without eliminating the presence of geometry.

The documented works attest to the diversity of the supports she uses. Corona Borealis (1970) combines acrylic and graphite on unstretched canvas. The Black Hand was made in glazed ceramic in 1983; Geometric Left (2015) and Montauk (2020), in turn, are acrylic paintings on canvas. These examples place the practices of ceramics and painting side by side without reducing one to the other. The diptych Chinatown, dated 1976, is associated with a period when Heilmann lived in the New York neighbourhood of the same name.

Several exhibitions make it possible to trace the presentation of her work at institutions in different countries. The touring exhibition to be someone is shown between 2007 and 2009 at the Orange County Museum of Art, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, and then the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. Good Vibrations is presented at the Bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht in 2012–2013, then at the Neues Museum in Nuremberg in 2013. In 2016, the Whitechapel Gallery in London presents Mary Heilmann: Looking at Pictures; Past Present Future is presented at the Hauser & Wirth gallery in Zurich in 2021. The publication Mary Heilmann: Little 9 x 9 (1973) / Blue Room (1997), devoted to these two works, is published by Oktagon in Cologne in 2000.

Works recorded at auction

Germann

Inside and Outside, 1993

Oil on canvas

Original catalogue wording

Inside and Outside, 1993
Öl auf Leinwand.

Date to be documented

Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed

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Germann

The Lost Father, 1993

Oil on canvas

Original catalogue wording

The Lost Father, 1993
Öl auf Leinwand.

Date to be documented

Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed

View the lot at the auction house ↗