Jump to content

Mary Frank

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mary Frank
Born
Mary Lockspeiser

(1933-02-04) 4 February 1933 (age 91)
London, England
CitizenshipUK
USA
Known forPainting, printmaking, sculpture
Spouse(s)
Robert Frank
​
(m. 1950⁠–⁠1969)​
(divorced)
Leo Treitler (m. 1995)
Children2

Mary Frank (née Lockspeiser; born 4 February 1933) is a British and American visual artist who works as a sculptor, painter, printmaker, draftswoman, and illustrator.

Biography

[edit]
Untitled (Prone Man, Two Trees) by Mary Frank

Frank was born in London, the only child of Eleanore Lockspeiser (née Weinstein; 1900–1986), an American painter, and Edward Lockspeiser (1905–1973), an English musicologist and art critic.[1]

In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, she left London for a series of boarding schools and then was sent in 1940 to live with her maternal grandparents, Gregory and Eugenie Weinstein in Brooklyn, New York.[2][3]

She studied modern dance with Martha Graham from 1945 to 1950 and was admitted to the High School of Music & Art in New York in 1947. In 1949, she transferred to the Professional Children's School, where she majored in dance. While in high school, she met Robert Frank, a Swiss photographer, whom she married in 1950. About this time she studied wood carving at Alfred van Loen's studio. She also studied drawing with Max Beckmann at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in New York and briefly with Hans Hofmann in 1951 and 1954.[citation needed]

By this time she had two children: Pablo (named after Picasso; born 7 February 1951) and Andrea (born 21 April 1953). After her husband, Robert Frank, gained a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955 she travelled with him and the children the following two years across the United States.[4]

Frank first exhibited her drawings in 1958 at the Poindexter Gallery in New York City. In 1969, she began her relationship with the Zabriskie Gallery in New York. Inspired by the sculpture and pottery of Margaret Ponce Israel, she began working in clay. It was also in that year that Frank illustrated the children's book, Buddha, by the author Joan Lebols Cohen.[5]

In 1969, she divorced Robert Frank. On 28 December 1974, her 21-year-old daughter, Andrea, was killed in a plane crash in Guatemala.[6] About a year later her son Pablo, who suffered from schizophrenia, developed Hodgkin's lymphoma and died on 11 November 1994, aged 43, at Lehigh Valley Hospital, Salisbury Township, Pennsylvania.[7]

Mary Frank currently lives and works in Lake Hill, New York and in New York City. Since 1995, she has been married to Leo Treitler, a pianist and music scholar.[8]

Frank's career spans five decades. She is largely self-taught and had no formal training as a sculptor. She was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1984, the recipient of numerous awards and honors including two Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship Awards in 1973 and 1983, the Lee Krasner Award of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 1993 and the Joan Mitchell Grant Award in 1995. In 1990 she was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1994. Working as a professor at Bard College (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York), Frank was honored with the title of Milton Avery Chair, Distinguished Professor.[9]

Currently, she has works included in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art,[10][11] the Whitney Museum of American Art,[12] the Museum of Modern Art,[13] the Brooklyn Museum,[14] the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art,[15] the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution,[16] the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts,[17] the Princeton University Art Museum,[18] the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art,[19] the Grounds For Sculpture,[20] the Weatherspoon Art Museum,[21] the Everson Museum of Art,[22] the University of Michigan Museum of Art,[23] the Library of Congress, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Art at Yale University, the Jewish Museum, the Whitney Museum, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.[citation needed]

Works

[edit]
  • Persephone (Ceramic sculpture, 1989)[24]
  • Messenger (Cast bronze sculpture, 1991–92)[24]
  • What Color Lament? (Oil and collage on board, 1991–93)[24]
  • Knowing by Heart (closed) (Acrylic, oil, and collage on panel, 1997)[24]
  • Knowing by Heart (open) (Acrylic, oil, and collage on panel, 1997)[24]
  • This is the Remembering (closed) (Oil and acrylic on panel, 1996–97)[24]
  • This is the Remembering (open) (Oil and acrylic on panel, 1996–97)[24]
  • Migration (closed) (Acrylic, oil, and collage on panel, 1998–99)[24]
  • Migration (open) (Acrylic, oil, and collage on panel, 1998–99)[24]
  • Where or When? (closed) (Acrylic, oil and collage on panel, 1998–99)[24]
  • Where or When? (open) (Acrylic, oil and collage on panel, 1998–99)[24]
  • Ballad (closed) (Acrylic, oil and collage on panel, 1997–99)[24]
  • Ballad (open) (Acrylic, oil and collage on panel, 1997–99)[24]
  • Creature (Oil on panel, 1999)[24]

Bibliography

[edit]
  • Rosen, Randy, and Catherine C. Brawer. Making Their Mark: Women Artists Move into the Mainstream, 1970-85. New York: Abbeville Press, 1988.
  • Mary Frank: Recent Paintings and Pastels, 1996 (exhibition catalogue), DC Moore Gallery, 1996
  • D'Souza, Aruna (March 2001). "Mary Frank and the Search for Self". Art in America. 89: 114–121.
  • Mary Frank: Experiences, 2003 (exhibition catalogue), DC Moore Gallery, 2003
  • Mary Frank: Paintings and Works on Paper, 2006 (exhibition catalogue), DC Moore Gallery, 2006
  • Nochlin, Linda, and Maura Reilly. Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader, 2015.

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Meeker, Carlene (1 March 2009). "Mary Frank". Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jewish Women's Archive. Archived from the original on 5 August 2018. Retrieved 11 October 2017.
  2. ^ Frank, Mary. "Oral History Interview with Mary Frank, 2010 Jan 10 - Feb 3". Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institution. Archived from the original on 2 April 2019. Retrieved 11 October 2017.
  3. ^ Frank, Mary; Sawin, Martica (2003). Mary Frank, Experiences. Richmond, Virginia: University of Richmond Museums. ISBN 0971375356.
  4. ^ "Mary Frank | Jewish Women's Archive". jwa.org. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  5. ^ Nochlin, Linda; Collischan, Judy (2000). Mary Frank: Encounters. N.Y.: Neuberger Museum. ISBN 0810967235.
  6. ^ O'Hagan, Sean (23 October 2004). "The big empty". Observer. Guardian News and Media Limited. Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 12 October 2017.
  7. ^ Notice of death of Pablo E. Frank, mcall.com, 14 November 1994. Accessed 8 June 2024.
  8. ^ Meeker, Carlene (1 March 2009). "MARY FRANK". jwa.org. Jewish Women's Archive. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 7 March 2014.
  9. ^ Heller, Jules; Heller, Nancy (1995). North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland. ISBN 9780824060497.
  10. ^ "Running Man, Mary Frank ^ Minneapolis Institute of Art". collections.artsmia.org. Archived from the original on 9 March 2018. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
  11. ^ "Persephone, from 'Persephone' series, Mary Frank ^ Minneapolis Institute of Art". collections.artsmia.org. Archived from the original on 9 March 2018. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
  12. ^ "Mary Frank". whitney.org. Archived from the original on 18 April 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  13. ^ "Mary Frank. Untitled. 1977 | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Archived from the original on 12 April 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  14. ^ "Brooklyn Museum". www.brooklynmuseum.org. Archived from the original on 11 March 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  15. ^ "Works – Mary Frank – Artists – Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art". Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  16. ^ "Mary Frank | Smithsonian American Art Museum". americanart.si.edu. Archived from the original on 7 November 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  17. ^ "Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts". PAFA - Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Archived from the original on 5 May 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  18. ^ "Mary Frank | Princeton University Art Museum". artmuseum.princeton.edu. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  19. ^ "Woman Figure". Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. 12 March 2015. Archived from the original on 12 January 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  20. ^ "Sundial". Grounds for Sculpture. Archived from the original on 19 April 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  21. ^ "Weatherspoon Art Museum - Seated Woman with Crossed Legs". weatherspoonartmuseum.org. Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  22. ^ "Everson Museum : Painting and Sculpture". www.everson.org. Archived from the original on 7 March 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  23. ^ "Exchange: MP-5". exchange.umma.umich.edu. Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  24. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Linda, Nochlin (2015). Women artists : the Linda Nochlin reader. Reilly, Maura. New York, New York. ISBN 9780500239292. OCLC 892891670.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

Sources

[edit]
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mary_Frank&oldid=1256890881"