Fannie Hillsmith (1911 – July 27, 2007) was an American
cubist
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
painter from Boston who during a long career, mostly based in New York City, developed a style of
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
which combined traditional Cubist motifs with what she called "an early American feeling."
Personal life
Fannie Hillsmith was born in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
,
in 1911.
Her grandfather,
Frank Hill Smith, was a painter, as well as one of the founders of the
Boston Museum School
The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (Museum School, SMFA at Tufts, or SMFA; formerly the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is the art school of Tufts University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusett ...
.
Hillsmith began sketching at an early age. She enrolled in the Boston Museum School in 1930, and graduated four years later.
Hillsmith married Gordon Welchman
William Gordon Welchman (15 June 1906 – 8 October 1985) was a British mathematician. During World War II, he worked at Britain's secret codebreaking centre, "Station X" at Bletchley Park, where he was one of the most important contributors. A ...
in 1958. Welchman was an American-English mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
who worked at Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...
and worked on code-breaking
Cryptanalysis (from the Greek ''kryptós'', "hidden", and ''analýein'', "to analyze") refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic sec ...
alongside Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical com ...
. The couple met while Hillsmith was on a one-year scholarship from the Boston Museum of Art to study in Europe. The couple divorced in 1970.
Career
Hillsmith moved from Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
to New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
in 1934.[ Once in New York, she took an interest in ]avant-garde art
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or 'vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical D ...
through her studies and gradually developed an abstract style. Hillsmith studied under such teachers as William Zorach
William Zorach (February 28, 1889 – November 15, 1966) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and writer. He won the Logan Medal of the arts. He is notable for being at the forefront of American artists embracing cubism, as well as for ...
and Yasuo Kuniyoshi
was a Japanese-American painter, photographer and printmaker.
Biography
Kuniyoshi was born on September 1, 1889 in Okayama, Japan. He immigrated to the United States in 1906, choosing not to attend military school in Japan. Kuniyoshi original ...
for one year while at the Art Students League
The Art Students League of New York is an art school at American Fine Arts Society, 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists ...
.[ She went on to study at ]New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
at the A. E. Gallatin Collection.[
Fannie Hillsmith held her first ]art show
An art exhibition is traditionally the space in which art objects (in the most general sense) meet an audience. The exhibit is universally understood to be for some temporary period unless, as is rarely true, it is stated to be a "permanent exhib ...
in New York at the Norlyst Gallery, owned by Jimmy Ernst
Hans-Ulrich Ernst (June 24, 1920 – February 6, 1984), known as Jimmy Ernst, was an American painter born in Germany.
Early life
Jimmy Ernst was born in 1920 in Cologne, Germany, the son of German Surrealist painter Max Ernst and Luise Str ...
, in 1943.[ Her work was included in ''Abstract and Surrealist Art in America'' by ]Sidney Janis
Sidney Janis (July 8, 1896 – November 23, 1989) was a wealthy clothing manufacturer and art collector who opened an art gallery in New York City, New York in 1948. His gallery quickly gained prominence, for he not only exhibited work by the Abs ...
, published in 1944.
Hillsmith displayed her work in three shows at the Art of This Century Gallery in Manhattan, which was owned by Peggy Guggenheim
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim ( ; August 26, 1898 – December 23, 1979) was an American art collector, bohemian and socialite. Born to the wealthy New York City Guggenheim family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with t ...
. In 1953, she exhibited ''Interior in Tan'' in the show ''Nine Women Painters'' at Bennington College
Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont. Founded in 1932 as a women's college, it became co-educational in 1969. It claims to be the first college to include visual and performing arts as an equal partner in ...
. She also exhibited at a series of shows at the Peridot Gallery and the Charles Egan Gallery during the 1950s and 1960s.
Hillsmith began working at Atelier 17
Atelier 17 was an art school and studio that was influential in the teaching and promotion of printmaking in the 20th century. Originally located in Paris, the studio relocated to New York during the years surrounding World War II. It moved back ...
, which was an intaglio printmaking
Intaglio ( ; ) is the family of printing and printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the direct opposite of a relief print where the parts of the matrix that m ...
workshop owned by Stanley William Hayter
Stanley William Hayter (27 December 1901 – 4 May 1988) was an English painter and printmaker associated in the 1930s with surrealism and from 1940 onward with abstract expressionism. Regarded as one of the most significant printmakers of ...
, in 1946. She worked at Aterlier alongside noted artists such as Yves Tanguy
Raymond Georges Yves Tanguy (January 5, 1900 – January 15, 1955), known as just Yves Tanguy (, ), was a French surrealist painter.
Biography
Tanguy, the son of a retired navy captain, was born January 5, 1900, at the Ministry of Naval Affa ...
, Miró and Jacques Lipchitz
Jacques Lipchitz (26 May 1973) was a Cubist sculptor. Lipchitz retained highly figurative and legible components in his work leading up to 1915–16, after which naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, dominated by a synthetic style of Cr ...
.[ She became very close friends with Harriet Berger Nurkse and Alicia Legg.] Hillsmith also taught briefly at Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College was a private liberal arts college in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. The college was ideologically organized around John Dewey's educational ...
, located 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 ...
.[
Her most famous painting was the ''Molasses Jug,'' an ]oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...
completed in 1949.[ The artwork is held by the Flint Institute of Art.] Another notable piece is ''The Table–Study No. 5'', painted in 1947.
Fannie Hillsmith actively painted Cubist art for nearly sixty years.[ She had been represented by an art gallery in ]Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
's SoHo
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century.
The area was develop ...
neighborhood since 1990.[ She continued painting every day until January 2007.][
Hillsmith died in her sleep at her home in ]Jaffrey, New Hampshire
Jaffrey is a town in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 5,320 at the 2020 census.
The main village in town, where 3,058 people resided at the 2020 census, is defined as the Jaffrey census-designated place (CDP) a ...
on July 27, 2007.[
]
Artist style
Hillmsith's style of Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
combined traditional Cubist motifs with what she called "an early American feeling." She was influenced by such painters as Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
, Gris and Miró, according to ''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 ...
''.
She is quoted as saying, “I am interested in abstract art, but I am also interested in the message—the problem is to convey feeling with the impact of the abstract.”
References
Footnotes
Sources
*
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hillsmith, Fannie
1911 births
2007 deaths
American women painters
Black Mountain College faculty
Cubist artists
People from Jaffrey, New Hampshire
Artists from Boston
Painters from New York City
Painters from Massachusetts
20th-century American painters
20th-century American women artists
Painters from New Hampshire
Atelier 17 alumni
American women academics
21st-century American women