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Hartigan was born in New Jersey in 1922. At a young age, she wanted to be an actress. At 17, she married Robert Jachens. They headed for Alaska but ended up in Los Angeles, and Hartigan found out she was pregnant. They returned to New Jersey. Her husband was drafted into the 2nd World War, and Hartigan went to work as Draughtsman for money. The couple eventually split, and Hartigan was introduced to the works of Henri Matisse by a friend. In this period, she took art classes from local artist, Isaac Lane Muse.

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When she moved to the Lower East Side in 1945 she met Milton Avery. He introduced her to Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb and other expressionist artists.

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Marriage and Financial Trouble , 1948-49

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Marriage and Financial Trouble , 1948-49

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She officially divorced her husband in 1947. She also split her love affair with Isaac Lane Muse due to his jealousy over the praise she received for her work. She then married Harry Jackson in 1948, but this marriage also ended due to the attention Hartigan was receiving. The marriage was annulled in 1949. She struggled financially on her own.

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She was selected for The New Talent exhibition at the Samuel Kootz Gallery in 1950 which she showed with other artists like Elaine de Kooning, Franz Kline and Larry Rivers. Her first exhibition was the next year at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

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This is an earlier work of Hartigan. This was created in 1950 and is oil on canvas. This work has vibrant brushstrokes, dripping strokes of paint and large forms which can foreshadow her interest in actual subjects in later works.

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In her second solo exhibition in 1952, she started to include recognizable objects and subjects into her works which was very uncommon in abstract expressionism at the time.

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She collaborated with poet Frank O’Hara, in a series entitled oranges. Oranges No. 1 was created as a collaboration in how to translate the idea of his style/immediacy in his poetry to her own artwork. She abandoned tradition abstraction and experimented with figures and compositional structure. The poem is also displayed in the painting.

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In the 1950’s, Hartigan started to study old masters. In her Grand Street Brides (1954), there is a clear influence from Francisco de Goya. Like in Goya’s painting, the mannequins on display in the shop window symbolize women in the 19th century who were a commodity for sale.

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Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, and Grace Hartigan at the opening of Frankenthaler’s solo exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York, February 12, 1957.

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In 1958, she was titled, "most celebrated of the young American women painters" by Life Magazine. She was also the only female artist included in the traveling exhibition, The New American Painting.

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Monroe was doing a lot of work with pop artists at the time, but Hartigan’s depiction of the actress differed. There is a variety of brush work, bright colors associated with sexuality, scratches and heavy dark lines. For Hartigan, this disjointed work actually represented Monroe unlike the facade shown by the media.

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This painting was created later in Hartigan's life for a series called Great Queens and Empresses. This series highlights Hartigan's fascination with strong women in history. Joséphine eventually left her husband after years of it being made known that shes didn't fit into societal norms. She also helped popularize the empire waist line.

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Another example of a strong woman represented in the Great Queens and Empresses series. Queen Elizabeth I broke rules and took on the thrown as a young woman.

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“I try to make some logic out of the world that has been given to me in chaos. I have a very pretentious idea that I want to make life, I want to make sense out of it. The fact that I am doomed to failure — that doesn't deter me in the least.”

I really like this quote because she has been given obstacles as a female artist. Her determination to do what she loves has cost her marriages, but that doesn’t stop her. She stays true to herself.