Nasui Collection has made an important discovery of Hedda Sterne early years (life and creation) 1910-1941 of Hedda Sterne, consisting in documents, photographs and the body of artworks made by her until 1941.
Kept locked for more than 75 years in time, this little treasure survived miraculously and it reveals the creation and understandings of Hedda Sterne.
Since 2014, Nasui Collection has started to extensively learn and study about this, being in contact with diferent formal entities and with several art historians and researchers. The relevant important sources were either
consulted by handling hard copy original documents or by official requests to the relevant institutions:
-National Romanian Archives,
-Archives of Bucharest Municipality,
-Ministry of Foreign Affairs Romania,
-Romanian National Library,
-Romanian Academy Library,
-National University of Arts Library,
-Archives of Sigurantei (Secret Police),
-Centre Pompidou, Bibliothèque Kandinsky,
-Institute of Art History “G. Oprescu”
-private collections
-researchers and archivists
There is also a research study, first edition released in 2015 here
Cadavre exquis titled ”Cadavres Délicieux” (Surrealists collective work): Hedda Sterne, Theodore Brauner, Medi Wechsler Dinu, Jules Perahim
Hedda Sterne (born Hedwig Lindenberg) was an artist best remembered as the only woman in a group of Abstract Expressionists known as “The Irascibles” which consisted of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and others. Sterne was, in fact, the only woman photographed with the group by Nina Leen for Life magazine in 1950.
In her artistic endavors she created a body of work known for exhibiting a stubborn independence from styles and trends, including Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, with which she is often associated.
Sterne has been almost completely overlooked in art historical narratives of the post-war American art scene. At the time of her death, possibly the last surviving artist of the first-generation of the New York School, Hedda Sterne viewed her widely varied works more as in flux than as definitive statements.
In 1944 she married Saul Steinberg the Romanian-born American cartoonist and illustrator, best known for his work for The New Yorker. During the late 1940s she became a member of The Irascible Eighteen, a group of abstract painters who protested the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s policy towards American painting of the 1940s and who posed for a famous picture in 1950; members of the group besides Sterne included: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jimmy Ernst, Jackson Pollock, James Brooks, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Theodoros Stamos, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko. Her works are in the collections of museums including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, also in Washington D.C.
- 1910 – Born in Bucharest, Romania
- 1919 – Her father Simon dies and her mother remarries Leonida Cioara, the partner in their family business
- 1927 – Finishes high school
- 1928 – Enters University of Bucharest to study Art History and Philosophy but finds curriculum limiting and leaves after a year to do independent study.
- 1932 – Marries childhood friend Frederick Stern. They divorced in 1944.
- 1939 – Outbreak of World War II
- 1941 – Barely escaping a massacre of Jews in her apartment building Hedda flees to New York. Meets Peggy Guggenheim, through which she meets several artists
- 1944 – Marries Saul Steinberg and becomes a U.S. citizen
- 1950 – Named one of country’s best artists under age of 36 in the March 20 issue of Life. Signs a letter to President of The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 20 to protest aesthetically conservative group-exhibition juries.[5] All signers are dubbed “The Irascibles” in an articles about the letter wherein the famous Nina Leen photograph of the artists is published for the first time.
- 1960 – Sterne and Steinberg separate but remain close friends. Begins to disengage socially with the art world and leads an increasingly private life.
- 1992 – In November, meets the art dealer Philippe Briet, the beginning of a sustainable friendship leading to several projects, which will be interrupted by his prematured death in February 1997. In October 1994, he introduces writer Michel Butor to Hedda Sterne, being at the origin of their collaboration for the book he would publish in September 1995, La Révolution dans l’Arboretum.
- 1997 – Macular degeneration causes Sterne to stop painting; however she continues drawing
- 1999 – Her second husband Saul Steinberg dies
- 2004 – Suffers stroke. Makes a remarkable recovery but her eyesight fails causing her to stop practicing her art.
- 2006 – “Uninterrupted Flux: Hedda Sterne; A Retrospective” is written.[5]
- 2010 – Sterne reaches her 100th birthday in August
- 2011 – Dies in New York at age 100.
Artworks
- New York VIII, 1954 – The Museum of Modern Art
- Violin Lesson, 1944 – Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
- Machine 5, 1950 – Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Tondo #22, 1953 – Illinois State Museum
- Third Avenue El, 1952-53 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- New York No. 1, 1954 – Toledo Museum of Art
- New York, N.Y., 1955 – Whitney Museum of American Art
- New York, 1956 – The Art Institute of Chicago
- Barnett Newman, 1952 – Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College
- Diary, 1976
Awards
- 1957 – Second Prize, Art Institute of Chicago Annual
- 1963 – Fulbright Fellowship, Studied in Venice
- 1967 – First Prize, Art Institute of Newport Annual
- 1971 – American Academy of Arts & Letters, “Childe Hassam Purchase Award”
- 1984 – American Academy of Arts & Letters, “Hassam and Speicher Purchase Fund Award”
One Woman Shows
- 1936 – Bucureşti, Sala Mozart
- 1945 – Wakefield Gallery, NY
- 1945 – Mortimer Brandt Gallery, NY
- 1947 – Betty Parsons Gallery, ’48, ’50 ’53, ’54, ’57, ’58, ’61, ’63, ’66, ’68, ’70, ’74, ’75, ’78
- 1953 – Galleria dell’Obelisco, Rome, ’61
- 1953 – Museo de Arte, São Paulo, Brazil
- 1955 – Arts Club of Chicago
- 1956 – Vassar College
- 1956 – Saidenberg Gallery
- 1968 – Rizzoli Gallery
- 1971 – Sneed Gallery
- 1972 – Clinton, New Jersey
- 1973 – Upstairs Gallery, East Hampton
- 1973 – “Hedda Sterne: Recent Painting”, Rush Rhees Gallery, University of Rochester, NY (November 26 – December 15)
- 1975 – “Hedda Sterne: Portraits”, Lee Ault & Company, New York (October 15 – November 8)
- 1977 – “Hedda Sterne: Retrospective Exhibition”, Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey (April 24 – June 26)
- 1982 – “Hedda Sterne: A Painting in Life”, CDS Gallery, New York (March 17 – April 12)
- 1985 – “Hedda Sterne: Forty Years”, retrospective, Queens Museum of Art, New York (February 2 – April 14)
- 1993 – “Hedda Sterne“, Philippe Briet Gallery, New York (January 23 – February 27)
- 1995 – “Hedda Sterne, New Paintings”, CDS Gallery, New York (February 18 – March 31)
- 1998 – “Hedda Sterne: Dessins [1939-1998],” Bibliothèque Municipale, Caen (April 1–30)
Selected group shows
- 1943 – Art of This Century gallery, N.Y., “Exhibition of 31 Women”
- 1949 – Whitney Museum Annual, ’59, ’67
- 1951 – Los Angeles County Museum
- 1951 – Third Tokyo International Art Exhibition
- 1954 – Art Institute of Chicago Annual, ’55, ’57, ’60, ’61
- 1955 – Museum of modern Art
- 1955 – Corcoran Gallery Annual, Washington, D.C., ’56, ’58, ’63
- 1955 – Whitney Museum, “New Decade Show”
- 1955 – Carnegie International, ’58, ’61, ’62, ’64
- 1955 – Rhode Island School of Design, ’56
- 1956 – Venice Biennial
- 1956 – Smithsonian Institution
- 1956 – Art Institute of Chicago, “American Artists Paint the City”
- 1957 – Minnesota Institute of Art, “American Painting”
- 1958-59 – American Federation of Arts, University of Iowa, “Contemporary American Paintings”
- 1960 – Mexico City Biennial
- 1961 – Art Institute of Chicago, “Painting & Sculpture”
- 1962 – Molton Gallery, London “Four American Painters”
- 1964 – Cincinnati Art Museum
- 1964 – Das Kunstwerk, “The Work of Art”
- 1966 – Heron Museum of Art
- 1969 – Phillips Collection, Westmoreland Museum
- 1971 – Finch College, “Artists at Work”
- 1972 – Guild Hall, East Hampton, “Then & Now”
- 1971 – Minnesota Museum of Art, “Drawings USA/71”
- 1971 – Heckscher Museum, Huntington, N.Y.
- 1983, May 25-June 18, Betty Parsons Gallery. Mino Argento, Jack Youngerman, David Budd, Calvert Coggeshall, Cleve Gray, Lee Hall, Minoru Kawabata, Richard Pousette-Dart, Leon Polk Smith, Hedda Sterne, Ed Zutrau and Sari Dienes (among others).[14]
- 1994 – Galerie de l’École des Beaux-Arts, Lorient, “Le Temps d’un Dessin”, curated by Philippe Briet, drawings by 86 artists living in the United States (March 16-April 6).
Collections
- Metropolitan Museum
- Museum of Modern Art
- Whitney Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond
- University of Illinois, Urbana
- Rockefeller Institute
- Detroit Institute of Arts
- Joseph H. Hirshhorn Collection
- Albrecht Gallery, St. Joseph, Missouri
- Chase Manhattan Bank
- U.S. Department of State
- Albright-Know Art Gallery, Buffalo
- University of Nebraska Art Gallery
- Carnegie Institute
- Inland Steel Co., Chicago
- Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
- Toledo Museum of Art
- Childe Hassam purchase
- Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul