Sue Hettmansperger (born 1948) is an American artist known for paintings and collages that work across the spectrum of modernist abstraction and representational imagery.Elliot, David. Review, ''ARTnews'', Summer 1980. p. 207.Artner, Alan G. "Sue Hettmansperger," ''Chicago Tribune'', January 15, 1982.Naves, Mario. ''Sue Hettmansperger: Paintings and Drawings'', New York: A.I.R. Gallery, 1999. Her work explores the interconnectedness of human, botanical and inorganic systems, scientific concepts and ecological concerns.Farber, Janet. ''Iowa Artists 1996'', Des Moines, IO: Des Moines Art Center, 1996.Radl, Bill. "Faculty at work," ''Des Moines Sunday Register'', April 27, 1997, p. 5C.Freedman, Matt. ''Sue Hettmansperger: Paintings'', New York: A.I.R. Gallery, 2007. She has been awarded Guggenheim''Artforum''
"2008 Guggenheim Fellows Announced,"
News. April 8, 2008. Retrieved May 28, 2021. and

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

National Endowment for the Arts. ''A Creative Legacy: A History of the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists' Fellowship Program'', New York: Harry H. Abrams, 2001, p. 221. fellowships and her work belongs to the public collections of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

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 ...

and Des Moines Art Center, among other institutions.Elliot, David. "A heaping helping of Hettmansperger," ''Chicago Sun Times'', March 30, 1980, p. 10.The Metropolitan Museum of Art
" Curatorial Reports and Departmental Accessions,"
''Annual Report of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art'', July 1, 1984–June 30, 1985, p. 50. Retrieved July 14, 2021.Art Institute of Chicago
Sue Hettmansperger
Artists. Retrieved May 28, 2021.Des Moines Art Center
Sue Hettmansperger
People. Retrieved May 28, 2021.Swarthmore College. ''Sue Hettmansperger / Iterations: Painting and Collage'', Swarthmore, PA: List Gallery, Swarthmore College, 2019. She lives and works in

Iowa City Iowa City, offically the City of Iowa City is a city in Johnson County, Iowa, United States. It is the home of the University of Iowa and county seat of Johnson County, at the center of the Iowa City Metropolitan Statistical Area. At the time ...

and is Professor Emerita of Art at the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...

.University of Iowa
Sue Hettmansperger
People. Retrieved May 28, 2021.Iowa Women Artists Oral History Project
Sue Hettmansperger
Artist Pages. Retrieved May 28, 2021.

Early life and career

Hettmansperger was born in

Akron, Ohio Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County, Ohio, Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 C ...

in 1948. She grew up in

Albuquerque, New Mexico Albuquerque ( ; ), ; kee, Arawageeki; tow, Vakêêke; zun, Alo:ke:k'ya; apj, Gołgéeki'yé. abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding in ...

and the region's landscape is said to have had a longstanding influence on her color palette and interest in nature.John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Sue Hettmansperger
Fellows. Retrieved May 28, 2021. She studied at the

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 ...

Summer School in Art in 1971 and earned a BFA and MA in lithography and drawing from the

University of New Mexico The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...

in 1972 and 1974, respectively. In 1977, she joined the art faculty at the University of Iowa, where she taught until 2018. Hettmansperger's first featured exhibitions were at the

Roswell Museum and Art Center The Roswell Museum (formerly Roswell Museum and Art Center) was founded in 1936 and is located in Roswell, New Mexico, United States. The museum features exhibits about the art and history of the American Southwest, as well as the Robert H. God ...

in New Mexico (1976) and Frumkin and Struve Gallery in Chicago (1980, 1981).Elliot, David. "Sue Hettmansperger," ''Chicago Sun Times'', December 20, 1981.Artner, Alan G. "Beam of American light binds two diverse styles," ''Chicago Tribune'', April 1980. In the two Chicago shows she presented abstract colored pencil and mixed-media drawings consisting of mazes of looping, overlapping strips, quadrants, zigzags and geometric shapes that formed shallow but complex spaces. She received significant attention from Chicago art critics Alan Artner and David Elliot of ''ARTnews''.Elliot, David. "Drawing pleasure from 17 artists," ''Chicago Sun Times'', December 2, 1979.Elliot, David. "Tops in the arts, 1981: memories and musings," ''Chicago Sun Times'', December 27, 1981, p. 10. Eliot wrote that Hettmansperger's enigmatic spaces adapted the minimal forms of

Constructivism Constructivism may refer to: Art and architecture * Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes * Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in Russia in the 1920s a ...

and American

Precisionism Precisionism was a modernist art movement that emerged in the United States after World War I. Influenced by Cubism, Purism, and Futurism, Precisionist artists reduced subjects to their essential geometric shapes, eliminated detail, and often u ...

to create work that was "tactile in its crisp architecture, yet sensuous and spirited … almost spookily mysterious." In 1989, Hettmansperger began a long affiliation with A.I.R. Gallery in New York City—the first women artists' cooperative established in the United StatesA.I.R. Gallery
"A Short History."
Retrieved May 28, 2021.Gardner-Huggett, Joanna
"Artemisia Challenges the Elders: How a Women Artists' Cooperative Created a Community for Feminism and Art Made by Women,"
''Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies'', 33 (2), 2012, p. 55–75. Retrieved June 7, 2021.—which included seven solo exhibitions between 1990 and 2014.A.I.R. Gallery
Sue Hettmansperger
Artists. Retrieved May 28, 2021. She has also had solo shows at

Artemisia Gallery Artemisia Gallery was an alternative exhibition space in Chicago, Illinois, that operated from 1973 until its closure in 2003. History The gallery was a cooperative, started by 20 women who were frustrated by the lack of opportunities for femal ...

in Chicago (1995) and

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...

(2019), and appeared in group exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago,

Cedar Rapids Museum of Art The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art is a museum in downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa, United States. The museum is privately owned and was established in 1905. The museum acquired the old Cedar Rapids Public Library building after the library moved into a new ...

Figge Art Museum The Figge Art Museum is an art museum in Davenport, Iowa. The Figge, as it is commonly known, has an encyclopedic collection and serves as the major art museum for the eastern Iowa and western Illinois region. The Figge works closely with sever ...

, Hal Bromm Gallery and

Hyde Park Art Center The Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC) is a visual arts organization and the oldest Alternative exhibition spaces, alternative exhibition space in the city of Chicago. Since 2006, HPAC has been located just north of Hyde Park Boulevard, at 5020 S.Cornell ...

, among others.Hyde Park Art Center
"On Paper,"
Exhibition Archive. Retrieved June 7, 2021.

Work and reception

Critics relate Hettmansperger's work formally to the American modernist tradition of abstract or abstracted art rooted in nature (e.g., Georgia O'Keeffe, Arthur Dove and Marsden Hartley) and, in its interest in natural beauty, to 19th-century natural history painters such as Audubon and

Charles R. Knight Charles Robert Knight (October 21, 1874 – April 15, 1953) was an American wildlife and paleoartist best known for his detailed paintings of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. His works have been reproduced in many books and are currently ...

.Edwards, Kathy. "Sue Hettmansperger: 21st-Century Painter of America's Dystopic Natural History," ''Sue Hettmansperger: Paintings, Entanglement Series'', New York: A.I.R. Gallery, 2011.Packard, Andrea. "Sue Hettmansperger's Elegies for Anthropocene," ''Sue Hettmansperger / Iterations: Painting and Collage'', List Gallery. Curator Kathy Edwards has characterized the images as "simultaneously landscape, bodyscape, and mindscape." Hettmansperger's influences range from the formal theories of Josef Albers to scientific concepts involving

topology In mathematics, topology (from the Greek language, Greek words , and ) is concerned with the properties of a mathematical object, geometric object that are preserved under Continuous function, continuous Deformation theory, deformations, such ...

, biology, botany and physics to the southwest desert landscape. Her work has often begun with small-scale experiments in collage that can function as distinct artworks or serve as compositional studies for her oil paintings. Hettmansperger's individual canvasses, drawing installations and multi-panel works from the 1990s featured shifting aggregations of invented shapes, organic and manufactured forms, human anatomy and cartographic diagrams floating on fields of muted, dusk-like color.Nusbaum, Eliot. "'Iowa Artists 1996' is full of surprises," ''Des Moines Sunday Register'', March 10, 1996, p. 5C.Nusbaum, Eliot. "Faculty show is a stunner," ''Des Moines Sunday Register'', September 20, 1992, p. 7. Critics have described her vocabulary as a symbolic, personal ecology of complex interconnectedness that places disparate imagery and subjects—and in the collages, materials—in a "democratic dialogue."

Mario Naves Mario Naves-- (b. 1961, Salt Lake City, Utah) is an American artist, art critic, professor and blogger. Mario Naves studied painting and drawing at the University of Utah, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1984. He subsequently studie ...

wrote that her works "evoke the natural world as both a scientific discipline and an ecological conundrum." In the 2000s, writers have noted a more dystopic ecological urgency in Hettmansperger's paintings, expressed through saturated colors, emblem-like forms, imagery of industrial by-products, and distortions created through digital manipulation. Generally, these works feature lone, multi-dimensional structures of interwoven elements that float near the center of undefined spaces and have been likened to "debris captured by a river current or ocean gyre" by curator Andrea Packard.Wright, Lesley. ''Roots of Renewal'', Grinnell, IA: Grinnell College, Faulconer Gallery, 2004. Matt Freedman wrote that the ''Chimera'' paintings (2007) conveyed "the distinctiveness not only of contemporary and modernist art, but also of the postmodern human condition." Joe Fyfe suggested that the "Entanglement" series (2010–1) depicts images of wreckage, like "fossilized remains of the present found in some extremely distant future."Fyfe, Joe. "Sue Hettmansperger's Paintings," ''Sue Hettmansperger: Paintings, Entanglement Series'', New York: A.I.R. Gallery, 2011. The collages, paintings and polyptychs of Hettmansperger's "Iterations" series (2015–9) employ limited palettes and flattened surfaces that compress space using overlapping abstracted forms and aerial perspectives.Newhall, Edith
"Last call at Swarthmore,"
''Philadelphia Inquirer'', December 13, 2019. Retrieved May 28, 2021. Writers have interpreted them as elegies that mourn a lost connection to nature and have linked them in spirit to surrealist work and

metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

paintings by

Giorgio de Chirico Giuseppe Maria Alberto Giorgio de Chirico ( , ; 10 July 1888 – 20 November 1978) was an Italian artist and writer born in Greece. In the years before World War I, he founded the '' scuola metafisica'' art movement, which profoundly influ ...

that expressed the horrors of war. Hettmansperger has also collaborated with composer Lawrence Fritts on the video and sound works ''Mapppaemundi'' and ''Natural Language'' (both 2008), which explore the interrelationship of human and natural worlds as a cyclical feedback loop, using mathematical, biological, visual and sonic structures.

Public recognition

Hettmansperger has been awarded fellowships from the John S. Guggenheim Foundation (2008) and National Endowment for the Arts (1983), a grant from the Iowa Arts Council (2009), and artist residencies at

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 ...

, Ucross Foundation, the

and MacDowell Colony.Yaddo
Visual Artists
Artists. Retrieved June 8, 2021.Ucross Foundation

Artists. Retrieved June 8, 2021.The RAiR Foundation
Sue Hettmansperger
Retrieved June 8, 2021.MacDowell Colony
Sue Hettmansperger
Artists. Retrieved June 8, 2021. Her work belongs to public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago,

Albuquerque Museum The Albuquerque Museum, formerly known as the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, is a public art and history museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The museum is located in the Old Town area and is operated by the City of Albuquerque Department of ...

, Des Moines Art Center, and Roswell Museum and Art Center, among others.Art Institute of Chicago
Chart Series No. 1, Sue Hettmansperger
Artworks. Retrieved May 28, 2021. Her work also appears in the 2005 Midwest and ''15 Years'' (2009) volumes of ''New American Paintings''.Zevitas, Steven T
''New American Paintings''
Midwest, #59, Boston: Open Studios Press, 2010, p. 62–5.Zevitas, Steven T. ''New American Paintings: 15 Years'', Boston: Open Studios Press, 2009, p. 12.

References

External links

Sue HettmanspergerSue Hettmansperger
Iowa Women Artists Oral History Project
Sue Hettmansperger
University of Iowa profile
Sue Hettmansperger / Iterations: Painting and Collage
video discussion {{DEFAULTSORT:Hettmansperger, Sue 21st-century American painters 20th-century American painters Environmental artists Artists from Iowa University of New Mexico alumni University of Iowa faculty Artists from Albuquerque, New Mexico 1948 births Living people 21st-century American women painters 20th-century women painters