Anne Truitt
Encyclopedia
Anne Truitt was a major American artist of the mid-20th century; she is associated with both minimalism
and Color Field
artists like Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland
.
Truitt graduated from Bryn Mawr College
with a degree in psychology
in 1943. She was married to James Truitt
in 1948 (they divorced in 1969), and she became a full-time artist in the 1950s. She made what is considered her most important work in the early 1960s anticipating in many respects the work of minimalists like Donald Judd
and Ellsworth Kelly
. She was unlike minimalists in some significant ways.
The sculpture that made her significant to the development of Minimalism were aggressively plain and painted structures, often large. The recessional platform under her sculpture raised them just enough off the ground that they appeared to float on a thin line of shadow. The boundary between sculpture and ground, between gravity and verticality, was made illusory. This formal ambivalence is mirrored by her insistence that color itself, for instance, contained a psychological vibration which when purified, as it is on a work of art, isolates the event it refers to as a thing rather than a feeling. The event becomes a work of art, a visual sensation delivered by color. Her first solo exhibition was in 1963 at the André Emmerich
gallery, and in many senses her work also hews to what was emerging there. She was one of only three women included in the influential 1966 exhibition, Primary Structures
at the Jewish Museum
in New York. In Washington her work was represented by Pyramid Gallery which later became the Osuna Gallery.
Truitt is also known for three books she wrote, Daybook, Turn, and Prospect, all journals. For many years she was associated with the University of Maryland, College Park
, where she was a professor, and the artists' colony Yaddo
, where she served as interim president.
The Estate of Anne Truitt is represented by Matthew Marks Gallery
in New York and Stephen Friedman Gallery in London.
District of Columbia
Maryland
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Nebraska
New York
North Carolina
Virginia
Wisconsin
JM: How did Clement Greenberg
come to see your work? Was it through Kenneth Noland
?
AT: Yes. First it was Ken, who told David Smith
. David was the biggest, strongest supporter anybody could ever have.
JM: So they were the first two people to see your work?
AT: Yes; and then Clem. Clem said, "Now there will be three in Washington."
JM: You, Noland, and Morris Louis, presumably. In his essay on Minimalism, "Recentness of Sculpture" (1967), Greenberg talks about how difficult your work was for him initially, how he had to go back again until he finally "saw" it. Yet you've said he was impressed right away.
AT: Right away. There was no question about it.
JM: He was particularly impressed by Hardcastle.
AT: He backed away from it and said, "Scares the shit out of me." That's the only time I ever heard Clem swear. I remember being startled.
JM: That essay and the one he wrote about you the next year, "Changer: Anne Truitt," marked you as "Greenberg's Minimalist." He characterizes your work as a welcome antidote to that of Judd, Morris, and Andre. He praises the handmade quality of your sculpture and its intuitive color and attacks the industrial look of "orthodox" Minimalism. But you've also said that you later felt Greenberg was disappointed in you.
From Daybook, her first journal:
There is a sort of shame in naked pain. I used to see it in my patients when I was working in psychology and nursing. They found it more seemly, more expedient to pull over themselves thin coverlets of talk. There is wisdom in this, an unselfish honor in bearing one's burdens silently. But Rembrandt found a higher good worth the risk and painted himself as he knew himself, human beyond reprieve. He looks out from this position, without self-pity and without flourish, and lends me strength.
I sat for a long while in one of the rectangular courtyards, listening to the fountain. Feeling the artists all around me, I slowly took an unassuming place (for two of my own sculptures were somewhere in the museum) among the people whose lives, as all lives do, had been distilled into objects that outlasted them. Quilts, pin cushions, chairs, tables, houses, sculptures, paintings, tilled and retilled fields, gardens, poems—all of validity and integrity. Like earthworms, whose lives are spent making more earth, we human beings also spend ourselves into the physical. A few of us leave behind objects judged, at least temporarily, worthy of preservation by the culture into which we were born. The process is, however, the same for us all. Ordered into the physical, in time we leave the physical, and leave behind us what we have made in the physical.
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
and Color Field
Color Field
Color Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists...
artists like Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland was an American abstract painter. He was one of the best-known American Color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School...
.
Truitt graduated from Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College is a women's liberal arts college located in Bryn Mawr, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Philadelphia. The name "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in Welsh....
with a degree in psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
in 1943. She was married to James Truitt
James Truitt
James Truitt was an American journalist who worked for Life and Time magazines. He later became the vice president of Newsweek magazine.-Career:...
in 1948 (they divorced in 1969), and she became a full-time artist in the 1950s. She made what is considered her most important work in the early 1960s anticipating in many respects the work of minimalists like Donald Judd
Donald Judd
Donald Clarence Judd was an American artist associated with minimalism . In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy...
and Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly is an American painter and sculptor associated with Hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and the Minimalist school. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing the simplicity of form found similar to the work of John McLaughlin. Kelly often employs bright colors to...
. She was unlike minimalists in some significant ways.
The sculpture that made her significant to the development of Minimalism were aggressively plain and painted structures, often large. The recessional platform under her sculpture raised them just enough off the ground that they appeared to float on a thin line of shadow. The boundary between sculpture and ground, between gravity and verticality, was made illusory. This formal ambivalence is mirrored by her insistence that color itself, for instance, contained a psychological vibration which when purified, as it is on a work of art, isolates the event it refers to as a thing rather than a feeling. The event becomes a work of art, a visual sensation delivered by color. Her first solo exhibition was in 1963 at the André Emmerich
André Emmerich
André Emmerich was an influential German born American gallerist who specialized in the color field school and pre-Columbian art while also taking on artists such as David Hockney and Al Held....
gallery, and in many senses her work also hews to what was emerging there. She was one of only three women included in the influential 1966 exhibition, Primary Structures
Primary Structures (1966 exhibition)
Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors was a minimalist art exhibit shown from April 27 - June 12, 1966 at the Jewish Museum in New York...
at the Jewish Museum
Jewish Museum (New York)
The Jewish Museum of New York, an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, is the leading Jewish museum in the United States. With over 26,000 objects, it contains the largest collection of art and Jewish culture outside of museums in Israel. The museum is housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in...
in New York. In Washington her work was represented by Pyramid Gallery which later became the Osuna Gallery.
Truitt is also known for three books she wrote, Daybook, Turn, and Prospect, all journals. For many years she was associated with the University of Maryland, College Park
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
, where she was a professor, and the artists' colony Yaddo
Yaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."...
, where she served as interim president.
The Estate of Anne Truitt is represented by Matthew Marks Gallery
Matthew Marks Gallery
Matthew Marks is an art gallery located in the New York City neighborhood of Chelsea. Founded in the early 1990s by Matthew Marks, it specializes in modern and contemporary art in a variety of media: including painting, sculpture, photography, installation art, film, and drawings and prints...
in New York and Stephen Friedman Gallery in London.
Works in Collections
Arizona- 'Summer Treat', 1968, University of Arizona Museum of ArtUniversity of Arizona Museum of ArtThe University of Arizona Museum of Art is an art museum in Tucson, Arizona, operated by the University of Arizona. The museum's permanent collection includes some 5,000 works of art, including paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings....
, Tucson
District of Columbia
- 'Pilgrim', 1979, Arnold & Porter LLC, Washington
- 'Flower', 1969, Corcoran Gallery of ArtCorcoran Gallery of ArtThe Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...
, Washington - 'Insurrection', 1962, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington
- '13 October 1973', 1973, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture GardenHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture GardenThe Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...
, Washington - 'Night Naiad', 1977, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington
- 'Mid-Day', 1972, National Gallery of ArtNational Gallery of ArtThe National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
, Washington - 'Spume', 1972, National Gallery of Art, Washington
- 'Summer Dryad', 1971, National Museum of Women in the ArtsNational Museum of Women in the ArtsThe National Museum of Women in the Arts , located in Washington, D.C. is the only museum solely dedicated to celebrating women’s achievements in the visual, performing, and literary arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay...
, Washington - '17th Summer', 1974, Smithsonian American Art MuseumSmithsonian American Art MuseumThe Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States...
, Washington - 'Keep', 1962, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington
Maryland
- 'Ship-Lap', 1962, Baltimore Museum of ArtBaltimore Museum of ArtThe Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works...
, Baltimore - 'Watauga', 1962, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
- 'Whale's Eye', 1969, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
- 'Three', 1962, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
- 'A Wall for Apricots', 1968, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
- 'Meadow Child', 1969, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
- 'Odeskalki', 1963/82, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
- 'Parva IV', 1974, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
- 'Lea', 1962, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
- 'Carson', 1963, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
Michigan
- 'Sandcastle', 1984, University of Michigan Museum of ArtUniversity of Michigan Museum of ArtThe University of Michigan Museum of Art, or UMMA in Ann Arbor, Michigan with is one of the largest university art museums in the USA. Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alumni Memorial Hall originally housed U-M's Alumni office along with the...
, Ann Arbor
Minnesota
- 'Australian Spring', 1972, Walker Art CenterWalker Art CenterThe Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
, Minneapolis
Missouri
- 'Morning Choice', 1968, St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis
- 'Prima', 1978, Mildred Lane Kemper Art MuseumMildred Lane Kemper Art MuseumThe Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, sometimes referred to simply as "The Milly", is an art museum located on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, within the university's Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. It was founded in 1881 as the St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, and...
, St. Louis
Nebraska
- 'Still', 1999, Sheldon Memorial Art GallerySheldon Memorial Art GalleryThe Sheldon Museum of Art is located at 12 & R Streets in Lincoln, Nebraska, on the city campus of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The Sheldon houses both the Sheldon Art Association collection , and the University of Nebraska collection, initiated in 1929. Together they comprise more than...
, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
New York
- 'Sentinel', 1978, Albright-Knox Art GalleryAlbright-Knox Art GalleryThe Albright-Knox Art Gallery is an art museum located in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. The gallery is a major showplace for modern art and contemporary art. It is located directly across the street from Buffalo State College.-History:...
, Buffalo - 'Carolina Noon', Michael C. Rockefeller Arts Center, New York
- 'Catawba', 1962, Museum of Modern ArtMuseum of Modern ArtThe Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, New York - 'Twining Court I', 2001, Museum of Modern Art, New York
- 'Untitled', 1962, Museum of Modern Art, New York
- 'Desert Reach', 1971, Whitney Museum of American ArtWhitney Museum of American ArtThe Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, New York
North Carolina
- 'Night Wing', 1972–78, Mint Museum, Charlotte
Virginia
- 'Signal', 1978, Federal Reserve Bank of RichmondFederal Reserve Bank of RichmondThe Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond is the headquarters of the Fifth District of the Federal Reserve located in Richmond, Virginia. It covers the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and most of West Virginia. Branch offices are located in Baltimore, Maryland...
, Richmond
Wisconsin
- 'Summer Sentinel', 1963–72, Milwaukee Art MuseumMilwaukee Art MuseumThe Milwaukee Art Museum is located on Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Beginning around 1872, multiple organizations were founded in order to bring an art gallery to Milwaukee, as the city was still a growing port town with little or no facilities to hold major art exhibitions...
, Milwaukee
Quotations
From a 2002 interview with James Meyer comes the following exchange:JM: How did Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
come to see your work? Was it through Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland was an American abstract painter. He was one of the best-known American Color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School...
?
AT: Yes. First it was Ken, who told David Smith
David Smith
-In sports:* Dai Smith , rugby league footballer of the 1900s, who played for Salford, and Other Nationalities* David Smith , South African Olympic sport shooter...
. David was the biggest, strongest supporter anybody could ever have.
JM: So they were the first two people to see your work?
AT: Yes; and then Clem. Clem said, "Now there will be three in Washington."
JM: You, Noland, and Morris Louis, presumably. In his essay on Minimalism, "Recentness of Sculpture" (1967), Greenberg talks about how difficult your work was for him initially, how he had to go back again until he finally "saw" it. Yet you've said he was impressed right away.
AT: Right away. There was no question about it.
JM: He was particularly impressed by Hardcastle.
AT: He backed away from it and said, "Scares the shit out of me." That's the only time I ever heard Clem swear. I remember being startled.
JM: That essay and the one he wrote about you the next year, "Changer: Anne Truitt," marked you as "Greenberg's Minimalist." He characterizes your work as a welcome antidote to that of Judd, Morris, and Andre. He praises the handmade quality of your sculpture and its intuitive color and attacks the industrial look of "orthodox" Minimalism. But you've also said that you later felt Greenberg was disappointed in you.
From Daybook, her first journal:
There is a sort of shame in naked pain. I used to see it in my patients when I was working in psychology and nursing. They found it more seemly, more expedient to pull over themselves thin coverlets of talk. There is wisdom in this, an unselfish honor in bearing one's burdens silently. But Rembrandt found a higher good worth the risk and painted himself as he knew himself, human beyond reprieve. He looks out from this position, without self-pity and without flourish, and lends me strength.
I sat for a long while in one of the rectangular courtyards, listening to the fountain. Feeling the artists all around me, I slowly took an unassuming place (for two of my own sculptures were somewhere in the museum) among the people whose lives, as all lives do, had been distilled into objects that outlasted them. Quilts, pin cushions, chairs, tables, houses, sculptures, paintings, tilled and retilled fields, gardens, poems—all of validity and integrity. Like earthworms, whose lives are spent making more earth, we human beings also spend ourselves into the physical. A few of us leave behind objects judged, at least temporarily, worthy of preservation by the culture into which we were born. The process is, however, the same for us all. Ordered into the physical, in time we leave the physical, and leave behind us what we have made in the physical.
Sources
- Anne Truitt, Acknowledgements by Roy Slade & Walter HoppsWalter HoppsWalter Hopps was an American museum director and curator of contemporary art. His obituary in the Washington Post described him as a "sort of a gonzo museum director -- elusive, unpredictable, outlandish in his range, jagged in his vision, heedless of rules."Hopps was born in Eagle Rock, Los...
, Copyright 1974 The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.: printed by Garamond/Pridemark Press, Baltimore, MD LCCC#75-78522