"I see myself as a well-working lens, a perceiver of something that exists independently of me: don’t look at.mes , look at what I’ve found."
© 2022 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
A fter arriving to the United States from a war-torn Europe in 1941, Hedda Sterne became associated with the newly emerging generation of American painters. Famously portrayed in Nina Leen’s 1951 Life Magazine photograph of “The Irascible 18”, Hedda Stern—the only woman in the picture—described herself as “the feather on top” of the abstract expressionists. Often understood as a leading transitional figure in art, Sterne’s surrealistic tendencies and dream-like imagery quickly evolved into the realm of abstraction once she left the old continent. Captivated by the reality of a nation that exceeded the imagery of surrealism, the artist felt a fascination towards the representation of her immediate surroundings through the lens of abstraction.
“And then, when I came to the United States, I was struck that this country was more Surrealistic than anything anybody imagined… That kind of freedom, that romanticism about the future, was utterly delightful to me.”
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM: WILLEM DE KOONING, ADOLPH GOTTLIEB, AD REINHARDT, HEDDA STERNE, RICHARD POUSETTE-DART, WILLIAM BAZIOTES, JACKSON POLLOCK, CLYFFORD STILL, ROBERT MOTHERWELL, BRADLEY WALKER TOMLIN, THEODOROS STAMOS, MAX ERNST, BARNETT NEWMAN, JAMES BROOKS, AND MARK ROTHKO.
