Lee KrasnerRe-Echo
Art Bridges Collection
Grace HartiganFantasy for Legs and Feet
About
Bridging figuration and abstraction, Grace Hartigan’s Fantasy for Legs and Feet reflects a transition in the artist’s career. Hartigan wrote: “I want an art that is not ‘abstract’ and not ‘realistic.” While the artist is often seen as part of the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, she embraced the rise of Pop Art in the early 1960s.
Fantasy for Legs and Feet is part of a larger series of works from this era that both replicate and oppose abstraction. In this work, a mosaic of vivid jewel tones and textural shapes form detached human limbs while a face emerges from the composition.
This figurative imagery is embedded into hallmark techniques of line and color used by Abstract Expressionists. Hartigan refuses to be limited by the mid-century canon in this ironic disruption.
Artist
Grace Hartigan
Dimensions
72 x 72 in. (182.9 x 182.9 cm)
Credit Line
Art Bridges
Date
1965
Medium
Oil on canvas
Object Number
AB.2023.2
Provenance
Artist; to American Contemporary Art Gallery, Germany (1993); purchased by private collector, Germany (1994); purchased by American Contemporary Art Gallery, Germany (2022)
