Deborah Remington (June 25, 1930 – April 21, 2010) was an American abstract painter. Her most notable work is characterized as
Hard-edge painting
Hard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas are often of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and C ...
abstraction.
She became a part of the San Francisco Bay Area's
Beat
Beat, beats or beating may refer to:
Common uses
* Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area
** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols
** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men
* Battery (c ...
scene in the 1950s. In 1965, she moved to New York where her style solidified and her career grew substantially. A twenty-year retrospective of her work was exhibited at the Newport Harbor Art Museum in California, in 1983.
Her work was a part of more than thirty solo exhibition and hundreds of group exhibitions including three
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), ...
annuals.
She was the descendant of artist
Frederic Remington
Frederic Sackrider Remington (October 4, 1861 – December 26, 1909) was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in the genre of Western American Art. His works are known for depicting the Western United Stat ...
.
Biography
Remington was born in 1930 and grew up in
Haddonfield, New Jersey
:''Not the fictional Illinois town from the Halloween film series.''
Haddonfield is a borough located in Camden County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough had a total population of 11,593, . She was the daughter of the late Malcolm VanDyke and Hazel (née Stewart) Remington. With an early inclination towards art, she enrolled in classes at the
Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art as a teenager. In 1955, she received her BFA from the
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...
where she studied under
Clyfford Still
Clyfford Still (November 30, 1904 – June 23, 1980) was an American painter, and one of the leading figures in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, who developed a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediately follo ...
.
By the time she graduated from the Institute, she had become affiliated with the Bay Area's Beat scene. In 1954, she was one of six painters and poets, and the only woman, who founded the now legendary
Six Gallery in San Francisco.
After graduation, Remington spent two years traveling and living in Japan, Southeast Asia, and India. While in Japan she studied classical and contemporary calligraphy and earned money by teaching English and tutoring actors. This led to some work acting in B movies, including the film "Nightmare's Bad Dream".
Returning to the United States, she took up painting more seriously. She began to exhibit her work at the Dilexi Gallery in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
and had solo shows in 1962, 1963, and 1965. In 1965, Remington moved to New York City. She had her first solo exhibition in NYC in 1966 at the
Bykert Gallery Bykert Gallery was a contemporary art gallery in New York City between 1966 and 1975, run by Klaus Kertess (1940 - 2016) and Jeff Byers who had been classmates at Yale College, class of 1958. The gallery originally was located at 15 West West 57th ...
at 15 W. 57th Street in Manhattan. She had four solo shows there between 1967 and 1974.
[Deborah Remington]
. David Richard Gallery. Retrieved August 28, 2016.
In 1983 Remington had a twenty-year retrospective exhibition that opened at the
Newport Harbor Museum in California. This exhibition later traveled to the Oakland Museum (today, the
Oakland Museum of California
The Oakland Museum of California or OMCA (formerly the Oakland Museum) is an interdisciplinary museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California, located adjacent to Oak Street, 10th Street, and 11th Street in Oakland, Cali ...
) and other venues.
In 1984 she received a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
.
She was elected to the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...
in 1999, and in the same year was the recipient of a
Pollock-Krasner Foundation
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing financial assistance to individual working artists of established ability. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expression ...
Grant.
Death
Remington died April 21, 2010 in
Moorestown, New Jersey
Moorestown is a township in Burlington County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is an eastern suburb of Philadelphia and geographically part of the South Jersey region of the state. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the township's population was ...
of cancer, aged 79.
She was interred at Haddonfield Baptist Cemetery in Haddonfield, New Jersey.
Selected collections
Remington's work has been collected by numerous institutions both in the United States and abroad: the
Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mill ...
, Illinois; the
Auckland War Memorial Museum
The Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira (or simply the Auckland Museum) is one of New Zealand's most important museums and war memorials. Its collections concentrate on New Zealand history (and especially the history of the Aucklan ...
, New Zealand; the
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The Bibliothèque nationale de France (, 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository ...
, Paris; the
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen () is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from the two most important collectors of Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. It is located at ...
, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; the
Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou, Paris; the
Columbus Museum of Art
The Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Formed in 1878 as the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts (its name until 1978), it was the first art museum to register its charter with the state of Ohio. The museum collect ...
, Columbus, Ohio; the
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive,
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, California; the
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 ...
(formerly National Museum of American Art), Washington, D.C.; and 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.
Awards and recognition
In 1999, Remington was elected to the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...
and received a
Pollock-Krasner Foundation
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing financial assistance to individual working artists of established ability. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expression ...
Grant that same year. She was awarded a
National Endowment Fellowship from 1979-1980. In the fall of 1973, Remington was a
Tamarind
Tamarind (''Tamarindus indica'') is a Legume, leguminous tree bearing edible fruit that is probably indigenous to tropical Africa. The genus ''Tamarindus'' is monotypic taxon, monotypic, meaning that it contains only this species. It belongs ...
Fellow Artist-in-Residence.
References
External links
Biographic notesWhitney Museum of American Art Deborah Remington Collection Art in America reviewArtCritical.com reviewCareer NotesParrasch Heijnen Gallery Deborah Remington: A Life In Drawing ExhibitionParts & Labor Beacon Gallery Davina Semo and Deborah Remington Exhibition
{{DEFAULTSORT:Remington, Deborah
1930 births
2010 deaths
American abstract artists
American women painters
American women printmakers
Artists from New York (state)
Deaths from cancer in New Jersey
American contemporary painters
People from Haddonfield, New Jersey
San Francisco Art Institute alumni
University of the Arts (Philadelphia) alumni
20th-century American women artists
20th-century American printmakers
21st-century American women