Dorothy Grebenak (June 3, 1913 – June 13, 1990) was an American pop artist. Largely self-taught, she is known for her large, hand-hooked wool rugs of familiar subjects, such as baseball trading cards, Tide boxes, and dollar bills.

Bio

Grebenak was born in

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwe ...

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

descent. Her husband Louis, also an artist, was a

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proce ...

who later turned to

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 ...

. The couple lived in

Park Slope, Brooklyn A park is an area of natural, semi-natural or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. Urban parks are green spaces set aside for recreation inside towns and cities. N ...

until 1971. Grebenak taught high school and studied dance. By 1948 she was making rugs which she initially sold in the shop at the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

. Her hooked rugs differed from contemporary craft artists'

fiber art Fiber art (fibre art in British spelling) refers to fine art whose material consists of natural or synthetic fiber and other components, such as fabric or yarn. It focuses on the materials and on the manual labor on the part of the artist as ...

in two significant ways: first, their pop imagery made them more fine than

folk art Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative art, decorative. The makers of folk art a ...

; second, they were intended not for use on the floor, but to be hung on the wall as a painting would be. In 1963 and 1964 Grebenak had two solo exhibitions at Allan Stone Gallery, through which her rugs entered the private collections of major art collectors, including

Nelson Rockefeller Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (July 8, 1908 – January 26, 1979), sometimes referred to by his nickname Rocky, was an American businessman and politician who served as the 41st vice president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. A member of t ...

, Albert and Vera List, William and Norma Copley, Carter Burden, and John and Kimiko Powers. Her work was featured in various group exhibitions and was included in the

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 ...

's ''Pop Art and the American Tradition'' exhibition in 1965. Her work was featured in a leading national magazine in the late sixties, with an illustration of her "Man-hole cover" rug. She wove a blanket and small rugs as gifts to her grand nephew and grand nieces. She used wool colored with natural dyes. Despite her modest critical and commercial success at mid-century, Grebenak all but disappeared from the art world soon thereafter. Many of her rugs, too, have either vanished or fallen apart over time. After her husband's death in 1971, she relocated to

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

where she died in 1990.Sid Sachs and Kalliopi Minioudaki, ''Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968''. Philadelphia, PA: University of the Arts, Philadelphia, 2010.

References

Bibliography

#Sid Sachs and Kalliopi Minioudaki, ''Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968''. Philadelphia, PA: University of the Arts, Philadelphia, 2010. #

Jean Lipman Jean Herzberg Lipman (1909 – June 20, 1998) was an American artist, collector, and art historian, a pioneer in the study of American folk art. Biography A native of Manhattan, where she was born Jean Herzberg, Lipman grew up in Midtown before ...

, "''Money for Money's Sake''," ''Art in America'' v. 58 (January 1970), pp. 76–79. #Rita Reif, "''There's a Nude Sitting On the Lists' Piano''," ''

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 ...

'', March 5, 1966, p. 39.

External links

Two Views of Pop – Don Nice and Dorothy Grebenak – Exhibitions
a
Allan Stone Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grebenak, Dorothy 1913 births 1990 deaths 20th-century American women artists 20th-century women textile artists 20th-century textile artists Artists from Nebraska People from Oxford, Nebraska American textile artists