Bio
Jennifer Bartlett was a contemporary American artist whose paintings, drawings, and prints combined abstraction and representation, as seen in her large-scale installation Rhapsody (1975-1976). Bartlett’s subject matter was often quotidian–a white chair, trees in a garden, a hallway–yet structured and formally analyzed in such a way as to give it a sense of profound meaning. She explored various methodologies to question artistic form, asking, for example, what happens when a painting has no edges? “I did two big series. One was abstract and one was figurative. I think that an abstract painting is actually more figurative than a figurative painting, because it frequently is closer to the thing it is depicting,” she once reflected. “If you paint a red square, you have a red square of a certain measurable dimension. If you paint a vase of flowers, the vase of flowers is not measurable—more abstract than the red square.” Born on March 14, 1941 in Long Beach, CA, Bartlett studied at Mills College in Oakland where she became friends with the noted abstract painter Elizabeth Murray. She went on to receive her MFA from the Yale School of Art, studying under Alex Katz and Al Held, alongside peers such as Brice Marden and Richard Serra. The artist died on July 25, 2022 in Amagansett, NY. Today, Bartlett’s works are found in many institutional collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., among others. Today, Bartlett’s works are found in many institutional collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., among others.
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