Cora Kelley Ward (1920–1989) was born in

Eunice, Louisiana Eunice is a city in Acadia and St. Landry parishes in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The 2010 census placed the population at 10,398, a decrease of 1,101, or 9.5 percent, from the 2000 tabulation of 11,499. The St. Landry Parish portion of Eunic ...

and lived through the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

art movements of the 1960s to the 1980s, such as the Color Field Movement. Ward studied painting at the Newcomb Art School at

Tulane University Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into a comprehensive pub ...

and later earned a Master of Arts degree from Hunter College in New York City. Ward is known for her work in Abstract Expressionism and her meticulous picture-taking of the New York art scene from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Works

Cora Kelly Ward, untitled, ink on paper, 1960

She studied under

Josef Albers Josef Albers (; ; March 19, 1888March 25, 1976) was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo show at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College ...

and

Clement Greenberg Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formali ...

, who became a lifelong friend to Ward. 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 ...

she learned the concepts of

Modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

"through the teachings of European artists who taught at BMC and other schools when they fled Hitler's 'purification' of German culture". In 1955 she moved to New York City and settled in Greenwich Village and continued to pursue her art. "Ward's work was based on the second generation of Abstract Expressionism, ideologies which explored art at its most elemental core." She worked on solutions to self-imposed challenges, amassing a large body of work. Ward is most remembered as a photographer by her contemporaries and fellow artists from this period. The shy Ward would attend events, camera in hand, where she captured the interaction and excitement of the contemporary art world. In the exhibition held after her death in 1989, her longtime friend Clement Greenberg wrote in the catalog, “Cora was a dear and selfless friend. But I can confidently say that that doesn't sway me. It's only with these paintings of the eighties that I am able to hail her art without reservation. That makes me glad – regretfully so because she’s not here to read what I write.” Ward completed many works in her lifetime, but unfortunately she only began to be recognized near the end of her life. Her family was left with a huge number of paintings and no one to take them, so they ended up being donated to various museums and institutions, and later on, anyone that would take them. A large part of her estate, around a thousand paintings, was given as a gift to the

Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum The Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum is a museum located in Lafayette, Louisiana. It is the art museum for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and is named after Paul and Lulu Hilliard, who donated $5 million for the building's ...

of Louisiana by the heirs of the state. Ward died of what is believed to be cancer at age 69.

References

External links

A Work in Progress , The Advocate — Baton Rouge, LA

Cora Kelley Ward: A Work in Progress – News
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ward, Cora Kelley 1920 births 1989 deaths American abstract artists Painters from Louisiana Deaths from cancer Abstract expressionist artists Painters from New York (state) 20th-century American painters 20th-century American women artists People from Eunice, Louisiana Tulane University alumni Hunter College alumni Black Mountain College alumni