Mary Heilmann, Painter of Irreverent Abstractions, Dies at 86
“My inspiration for art doesn’t really come from the history of painting,” the artist told Hyperallergic in a 2013 interview, “it comes from the community of art as it is now.”
Mary Heilmann, a pioneering abstract artist who enjoyed a late-career renaissance after achieving global acclaim in her late 60s, died on Long Island on Friday at the age of 86. The Bridgehampton and Manhattan-based painter had suffered complications from a fall, according to a statement from her studio.
Originally a ceramicist, Heilmann shifted course to painting after moving to New York, crafting off-kilter, geometric compositions that put an irreverent spin on hard-edged abstraction. She adopted a technique that allowed neon-bright colors to drip across her canvases in a sly commentary about largely male artists whose self-serious works dominated much of Manhattan’s downtown art scene. Heilmann’s work would later be featured in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum, Dia Beacon, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Orange County Museum of Art, the Kunstmuseum Bonn in Germany, and Whitechapel Gallery in London.
“My inspiration for art doesn’t really come from the history of painting,” Heilmann said in a 2013 interview with Hyperallergic. “It comes from the community of art as it is now, and also popular culture, like movies and music and books and fashion, especially street fashion, not high fashion.”
