Anne Truitt (March 16, 1921December 23, 2004), born Anne Dean, was an American sculptor of the mid-20th century. She became well known in the late 1960s for her large-scale minimalist sculptures, especially after influential solo shows at

André Emmerich André Emmerich (October 11, 1924 – September 25, 2007) was a 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 John D. Graham. Early life and ...

Gallery in 1963 and the

Jewish Museum (Manhattan) The Jewish Museum is an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in the former Felix M. Warburg House, along Museum Mile on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The first Jewish museum in the Unit ...

in 1966. Unlike her contemporaries, she made her own sculptures by hand, eschewing industrial processes. Drawing from imagery from her past, her work also deals with the visual trace of memory and nostalgia. This is exemplified by a series of early sculptures resembling monumental segments of white picket fence.

Early life and education

Truitt grew up in Easton, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and spent her teenage years in

Asheville, North Carolina Asheville ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 11th-most populous cit ...

.Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection, October 8, 2009 - January 3, 2010

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The 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 des ...

, Washington D.C. She graduated from

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United St ...

with a degree in

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

in 1943. She declined an offer to pursue a Ph.D. in

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

’s psychology department and worked briefly as a nurseOral history interview with Anne Truitt, 2002 Apr.-Aug

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

. in a psychiatric ward at

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the third oldest general hospital in the United Stat ...

, Boston.Anne Truitt, 83; Sculptor Chronicled Life as Artist, Wife, Mother
''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'', December 30, 2004. She left the field of psychology in the mid-1940s, first writing fiction and then enrolling in courses offered by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Washington, D.C. She married the journalist James Truitt in 1947, though they divorced in 1971. It was said that James used to tease about Anne's columnar sculptures in referring to the works as "telephone booths".

Work

After leaving the field of

clinical psychology Clinical psychology is an integration of social science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and persona ...

in the mid-1940s, Truitt began making figurative sculptures, but turned toward reduced geometric forms after visiting the

Guggenheim Museum The Guggenheim Museums are a group of museums in different parts of the world established (or proposed to be established) by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Museums in this group include: Locations Americas * The Solomon R. Guggenhei ...

with her friend

Mary Pinchot Meyer Mary Eno Pinchot Meyer (; October 14, 1920 – October 12, 1964) was an American painter who lived in Washington D.C. She was married to Central Intelligence Agency official Cord Meyer from 1945–1958, and became involved romantically with P ...

to see H.H. Arnason's exhibition "American

Abstract Expressionist Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

s and Imagists" in November 1961. Truitt remembers that she "spent all that day looking at art…I saw

Ad Reinhardt Adolph Dietrich Friedrich Reinhardt (December 24, 1913 – August 30, 1967) was an abstract painter active in New York for more than three decades. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) and part of the movement center ...

's black canvases, the blacks and the blues. Then I went on down the ramp and rounded the corner and..saw the paintings of

Barnett Newman Barnett Newman (January 29, 1905 – July 4, 1970) was an American artist. He has been critically regarded as one of the major figures of abstract expressionism, and one of the foremost color field painters. His paintings explore the sense o ...

. I looked at them, and from that point on I was home free. I had never realized you could do it in art. Have enough space. Enough color." Truitt was especially inspired by the "universe of blue paint" and the subtle modulation and shades of color in Newman's Onement VI. The singularity of the Abstract Expressionists that she observed in work by Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt struck Truitt and sparked a turning point in her work. Truitt's first wood sculpture, titled ''First'' (1961), resembles a picket fence. It consists of three white vertical boards which come to a point—the pickets—which are braced from behind by a white post and two rails. The pickets, post, and rails are all attached to and visually grounded by a white base. The forms contain memories of her past and her childhood geography, rather reflection of a "direct result of an empirical perception." First is a permeable memory of the idea of a fence, of all the fences Truitt has seen, instead of a fence modeled off of a specific image. During a period spent in Japan with her husband, who at the time was the Japan bureau chief for ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...

'', she created aluminum sculptures from 1964 to 1967. Before her first retrospective in New York she decided she did not like the works and destroyed them.Ken Johnson (December 10, 2009)
Where Ancient and Future Intersect
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. The sculptures that made her significant to the development of Minimalism were aggressively plain and painted structures, often large. Fabricated from wood and painted with monochromatic layers of acrylic, they often resemble sleek, rectangular columns or pillars.Anne Truitt: Works From The Estate, 10 October - 19 November 2011
Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Truitt produces in scale drawings of her structures that are then produced by a cabinetmaker. The structures are weighed to the ground and are often hollow, allowing the wood to breathe in changing temperatures. She applies gesso to prime the wood and then up to 40 coats of acrylic paint, alternating brushstrokes between horizontal and vertical directions and sanding between layers. The artist sought to remove any trace of her brush, sanding down each layer of paint between applications and creating perfectly finished planes of colour. The layers of paint build up a surface with tangible depth. Additionally, the palpable surface of paint conveys Truitt's ever-present sense of geography in the alternating vertical and horizontal paint strokes, which mirror the latitude and longitude of an environment. Her process combined "the immediacy of intuition, the remove of prefabrication, and the intimacy of laborious handwork." The recessed platforms under her sculptures raised them just enough off the ground to appear 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. The ''Arundel'' series of paintings, begun in 1973, features barely visible graphite lines and accumulations of white paint on white surfaces. In the custard-color ''Ice Blink'' (1989), a tiny sliver of red at the bottom of the painting is enough to set up perspectival depth, as is a single bar of purple at the bottom of the otherwise sky-blue ''Memory'' (1981). Begun around 2001, the ''Piths'', canvases with deliberately frayed edges and covered in thick black strokes of paint, indicate Truitt's interest in forms that blur the lines between two and three dimensions. At her first show at

's gallery, Truitt exhibited six works of hand-painted poplar structures, including Ship-Lap, Catawba, Tribute, Platte, and Hardcastle. André Emmerich would go on to be her longtime dealer. Truitt was introduced to Emmerich through

Kenneth Noland Kenneth Noland (April 10, 1924 – January 5, 2010) was an American 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 though ...

, who Emmerich also represented. In accounts of her first solo show, one can see the chauvinistic undertones that were present in the 1960s New York art world. Greenberg, Rubin, and Noland chose Truitt's work to exhibit and organized the placement of the show without any input from Truitt herself. They often referred to her as the “gentle wife of James Truitt” and Emmerich encouraged Truitt to drop her first name to conceal her gender, in the hopes that this would help the exhibition's reception. After her first solo show, Greenberg declared in his essay "Recentness of Sculpture" (1967) that Truitt's work "anticipated" minimalist art. Greenberg's statement is sensationalist as Judd, Robert Morris, and

Dan Flavin Dan Flavin (April 1, 1933 – November 29, 1996) was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures. Early life and career Daniel Nicholas Flavin ...

had showed their work prior to hers. Truitt's drawings are not often remembered when considering her body of work. For much of the 1950s, Truitt worked in pencil, acrylic, and ink to create not only studies for later sculptures, but drawings that existed independently as works of art. Truitt is also known for three books she wrote, ''Daybook'', ''Turn'', and ''Prospect'', all journals. In ''Prospect'', her third volume of reflections, Truitt set out to reconsider her "whole experience as an artist"—and also as a daughter, mother, grandmother, teacher and lifelong seeker. For many years she was associated with the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Mary ...

, where she was a professor, and the artists' colony

Yaddo Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 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.". On March ...

, where she served as interim president. Truitt died on December 23, 2004 at

Sibley Memorial Hospital Sibley Memorial Hospital is a non-profit hospital located in The Palisades neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It is fully accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, and is licensed by the District of Columbia De ...

in Washington, D.C., of complications following

abdominal surgery The term abdominal surgery broadly covers Surgery, surgical procedures that involve opening the abdomen (laparotomy). Surgery of each abdominal organ is dealt with separately in connection with the description of that organ (see stomach, kidney, l ...

. She was survived by three children and eight grandchildren, among them writer

Charles Finch Charles Finch (born 1980) is an American author and literary critic. He has written a series of mystery novels set in Victorian era England, as well as literary fiction and numerous essays and book reviews. Life and career Finch was born in N ...

. Her daughter Mary Truitt Hill was married to the art critic Charlie Finch (1953/1954-2022) and they are in turn the parents of the aforementioned Charles.

Legacy

Fielding, H. (2011
Multiple Moving Perceptions of the Real: Arendt, Merleau-Ponty, and Truitt
(pages 518–534) This paper explores the ethical insights provided by Anne Truitt's minimalist sculptures, as viewed through the phenomenological lenses of Hannah Arendt's investigations into the co-constitution of reality and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's investigations into perception. Artworks in their material presence can lay out new ways of relating and perceiving. Truitt's works accomplish this task by revealing the interactive motion of our embodied relations and how material objects can actually help to ground our reality and hence human potentiality. Merleau-Ponty shows how our prereflective bodies allow incompossible perceptions to coexist. Yet this same capacity of bodies to gather multiple perceptions together also lends itself to the illusion that we see from only one perspective. If an ethical perspective becomes reified into one position, it then becomes detached from reality, and the ethical potential is actually lost. At the same time, phenomenologically understood, the real world does not exist in terms of static matter, but is instead a web of contextual relations and meanings. An ethics that does not take embodied relations into account—that allows for only one perspective—ultimately loses its capacity for flexibility, and for being part of a common and shared reality.

Exhibitions

Truitt's first one-person exhibition was at the André Emmerich Gallery, New York, in February 1963, and in many senses her work also hews to what was emerging there. Her work was included in the 1964 exhibition, "Black, White, and Gray," at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Ct, arguably the first exhibition of Minimal work. She was one of only three women included in the influential 1966 exhibition, ''

Primary Structures Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors was an exhibition presented by the Jewish Museum in New York City from April 27 to June 12, 1966. The show was a survey of recent work in sculpture by artists from the Northeast United Sta ...

'' at the

Jewish Museum A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area. List of Jewish museums Notable Jewish museums include: *Albania ** Solomon Museum, Berat *Australia ** Jewish Mu ...

in New York. Her work has since been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

, New York (1973); the

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...

, Washington, D.C. (1974); and the

Baltimore Museum of Art The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of ...

(1974, 1992). In 2009, the

, Washington, D.C., organized an acclaimed retrospective of her work, including 49 sculptures and 35 paintings and drawings. "In the Tower: Anne Truitt" was on view at the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...

from Nov. 19, 2017 to April 1, 2018.

Works in collections

Arizona *''Summer Treat'', 1968,

University of Arizona Museum of Art The University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) is an art museum in Tucson, Arizona, operated by the University of Arizona. The museum's permanent collection includes more than 6,000 works of art, including paintings, sculptures, prints and draw ...

, Tucson District of Columbia *''Keep'', 1962,

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

, Washington *''Insurrection'', 1962, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired in 2014 by the National Gallery of Art *''Flower'', 1969, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired in 2015 by the National Gallery of Art *''Arundel XI'', 1971, National Gallery of Art, Washington *''Summer Dryad'', 1971,

National Museum of Women in the Arts The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since openin ...

, Washington *''Mid-Day'', 1972, National Gallery of Art, Washington *''Spume'', 1972, National Gallery of Art, Washington *''13 October 1973'', 1973, Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington *''Sand Morning'', 1973, National Gallery of Art, Washington *''17th Summer'', 1974, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington *''Night Naiad'', 1977, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington *''Parva XII'', 1977, National Gallery of Art, Washington *Summer Remembered, 1981, National Gallery of Art *''Twining Court II'', 2002, National Gallery of Art Maryland *''Ship-Lap'', 1962,

, 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 *''Moon Lily'', 1988, Academy Art Museum, Easton *''Summer '88 No. 25'', 1988, Academy Art Museum, Easton *''Hesperides'', 1989, Academy Art Museum, Easton *''Summer '96 No. 26''. 1996, Academy Art Museum, Easton Michigan *''2 Feb '78'', 1978,

University of Michigan Museum of Art The University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan with is one of the largest university art museums in the United States. Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alumni Memorial Hall ori ...

, Ann Arbor *''Sandcastle'', 1984, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor Minnesota *''Australian Spring'', 1972,

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...

, Minneapolis Missouri *''Morning Choice'', 1968,

St. Louis Art Museum The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is one of the principal U.S. art museums, with paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from all corners of the world. Its three-story building stands in Forest Park in St. Louis, M ...

, St. Louis *''Prima'', 1978,

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum 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. Founded in 1881 as the St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts, it ...

, St. Louis Nebraska *''Still'', 1999,

Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery The Sheldon Museum of Art is an art museum in the city of Lincoln, in the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. Its collection focuses on 19th- and 20th-century art. History Sheldon Art Association In 1888, The Sheldon Art Assoc ...

, University of Nebraska, Lincoln New York *''Sentinel'', 1978,

Albright-Knox Art Gallery The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly known as the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, is an art museum at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, in Delaware Park. the museum's Elmwood Avenue campus is temporarily closed for construction. It hosted e ...

, Buffalo *''Carolina Noon'', Michael C. Rockefeller Arts Center, New York *''Catawba'', 1962,

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, New York *''Twining Court I'', 2001, Museum of Modern Art, New York *''Untitled'', 1962, Museum of Modern Art, New York *''Desert Reach'', 1971,

, New York North Carolina *''Night Wing'', 1972–78,

Mint Museum The Mint Museum, also referred to as The Mint Museums, is a cultural institution comprising two museums, located in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Mint Museum Randolph and Mint Museum Uptown, together these two locations have hundreds of collection ...

, Charlotte Virginia *''Signal'', 1978,

Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond The 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, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and most of West Virginia ...

, Richmond Wisconsin *''Summer Sentinel'', 1963–72,

Milwaukee Art Museum The Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) is an art museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its collection contains nearly 25,000 works of art. Location and Visit Located on the lakefront of Lake Michigan, the Milwaukee Art Museum is one of the largest art museu ...

, Milwaukee

Bibliography

* * *

References

Sources

*''Anne Truitt,'' Acknowledgements by Roy Slade &

Walter Hopps Walter "Chico" Hopps (May 3, 1932 – March 20, 2005) was an American museum director, gallerist, and curator of contemporary art. Hopps helped bring Los Angeles post-war artists to prominence during the 1960s, and later went on to redefine pract ...

, Copyright 1974 The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.: printed by Garamond/Pridemark Press, Baltimore, MD LCCC#75-78522 * Hopps, Walter. ''Anne Truitt, Retrospective: Sculpture and Drawings, 1961-1973''. Washington, D.C.: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1974. * Livingston, Jane. ''Anne Truitt: Sculpture 1961 – 1991''. New York: André Emmerich Gallery, 1991. * Meyer, James. ''Anne Truitt: Early Drawings and Sculpture, 1958-1963''. Atlanta: Michael C. Carlos Museum, 2003.

External links

Anne Truitt website Artforum James Meyer interview
{{DEFAULTSORT:Truitt, Anne 1921 births 2004 deaths American women sculptors Bryn Mawr College alumni Minimalist artists University of Maryland, College Park faculty American contemporary artists 20th-century American sculptors 20th-century American women artists Artists from Baltimore Sculptors from Maryland Women diarists Artists from Washington, D.C. 20th-century diarists 21st-century American women