Denise GreenAM (born 1946) is an Australian painter living and working inNew York City.[1] She is known for her contributions toNew Image Painting, an ambiguous art movement that began in the late 1970s.[2] Her paintings are typically abstract and present an idea rather than a formal representation of a subject. Her work is both analytic in structure and intuitive in colour and gesture.[3]
Denise Green was born in Australia in 1946 and grew up inBrisbane.[1] During her early years in Brisbane, she developed a strong interest inAboriginal art.[4] The work created by these indigenous artists continued to serve as inspiration throughout her extensive career.[4]
Green left Australia in 1966 to live and study in Europe, where she married her first husband, Bruce Wolmer, and developed a taste for abstract art. She studied inParis at theCollege de France but dropped out, the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts Supérieure but did not finish, and theSorbonne, as well did not finish.[5] Her brief architectural studies at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts Supérieure continued to serve as an influence on her earlier works even after she relocated to New York City.[6] After living in Paris for three years, Green left Europe to attend graduate school atHunter College in New York. There, she metMark Rothko andRobert Motherwell who became her teachers and mentors, introducing her to the artistic movements ofabstract expressionism,minimalism, andconceptual art.[5] Under their instruction, she developed a foundation inWestern modernism.[1]
In the 1970s, Green spent time traveling in India.[5] Her travels throughout the East to countries including India, Burma, Japan, and Indonesia were motivated by her visit to Kuringai Chase in the artist's native Australia, a sacred site to Australian Aboriginals.[7] This exposure to non-Western art influenced the artist's oeuvre and served as a catalyst for her ongoing interest in combining Eastern and Western thinking in her work, a topic that she discusses at length in her bookMetonymy in Art: a New Paradigm.[4]
In 2007, Green was made a Member of theOrder of Australia,[8] one of the highest recognitions of achievement and service for Australian citizens.[1]
Green was first recognized for her paintings at theWhitney Museum of American Art's exhibitionNew Image Painting in 1978.[3] Her work is included in major museum collections, including theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum and theMuseum of Modern Art in New York and theHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.[1] The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has two of Greens paintings in their permanent collection,To Draw On (1977) andTaxes (1993).To Draw On (1977) was included in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's 1987 exhibition,Emerging Artists 1978-1986: Selections From the Exxon Series and is an example of the artist's contribution to New Image Painting.[9]
Green's earlier works are predominantly cityscapes, such asLaight St., View No. 1 (1975).[3] The paintings that she made during her first years in New York often focused on the architecture of building facades, evidently inspired by her architectural studies in Paris in the 1960s.[6] During the mid- to late-1970s, her work became more abstracted as her focus shifted to the portrayal of centralized objects isolated in space.[3] In the 1980s, her work became even more abstracted with works likeSummer Heat (1981). With this work she introduces the use of ambiguous, calligraphic marks that allude to written language.[10] During this period of her oeuvre, Green emphasized strong colours and basic forms, like circles and fan shapes.[3]
The early 1990s marked another shift in her style with an exhibition in Sydney, Australia in 1992 atRoslyn Okley9 Gallery. Here, she exhibited eight large canvases that were predominately black and white. These works, includingCinderella What? (1992) andSnow White? (1992), provided a drastic contrast to Green's previous, colour-dominated works.[5] The artist describes this series of black and white paintings as a response to her father's death. These works in particular illuminate the connection that the artist draws between all of her work and her own personal narrative.[3]
In 2013, Green and her husband, Dr. Francis X. Claps, donated a gift of 80 works on paper and 36 paintings by Green valued at more than one million Australian dollars to theUniversity of Queensland Art Museum.[11]
Since the beginning of her career, Green has had more than 130 one-person shows and her work has been shown in nine museum retrospectives since 1999, including venues atMoMA PS1, New York and theArt Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.[12] The artist continues to paint, take photographs, and make collages and works on paper today.[1]
Green is the author of two books:Metonymy in Art: a New Paradigm, published by the University of Minnesota Press and Macmillan Art Publishers (Australia) in 2005, andAn Artist's Odyssey, released by the same publishers in 2012.[1]
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