\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tMary Heilmann in her studio on Hyde Street, San Francisco CA, ca. 1979<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Mark Magill\/Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and 303 Gallery, New York<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tMary Ann Heilmann was born in San Francisco on January 3, 1940. Born to Mary Florence Webb, a nurse, and John Sherman Heilmann, a civil engineer, Heilmann split her childhood between the Bay Area and, after her father took a job building freeways, Los Angeles, by way of El Segundo, a seaside village nearby. <\/p>\n \n\tEarly on, Heilmann was exposed to the free speech movement, the Beat Generation, and surf culture, all of which made a strong impression on the young artist. She started as a ceramicist, earning her bachelor\u2019s from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1962. She later enrolled at UC Berkeley so that she could study ceramics under Peter Voulkos, who applied Abstract Expressionist ideas to the medium.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter completing her MFA at Berkeley in 1967, Heilmann moved to New York where she began painting, favoring bright acrylic paints and lush color palettes, referring to the works as \u201csculptural material.\u201d She often blurred the boundary between her artworks and the exhibition space.<\/p>\n \n\tShe first gained recognition when she was included in the 1972 Whitney Annual Exhibition, the precursor to the Biennial.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIn what she considered one of the most important technical breakthroughs of her career,\u201d Hauser & Wirth has written about that period of Heilmann\u2019s career, \u201cshe experimented with layering controverting painting techniques: a foundational layer, often a gestural composition, covered in parts with masking tape and overpainted with a second layer, often a hard-edge composition. The result, formally and technically original, exemplifies the rapturous freedom that would come to define Heilmann\u2019s oeuvre.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tMary Heilmann, Surfing on Acid<\/em>, 2005.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tAs her work developed in the \u201970s and \u201980s, Heilmann began transforming personal references like music, waves, California highways, and other symbols into more simple visual forms like circles, squares, and stripes. Works were often titled after a popular song or an experience like Driving at Night<\/em> in an effort to connect with the audience. Throughout the \u201990s and aughts, she moved closer to the center of the art world as her work gained recognition, as well a fellowship from the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. For decades, Heilmann supported her practice as a professor, first at Stony Brook University and later at the School of Visual Arts in New York.<\/p>\n \n\tIn her twilight years, she lived in Bridgehampton, New York, after visiting the area regularly since the 1960s. Heilmann, who never married or had children, is survived by her nieces, Ann Jaime and Chris Heilmann, her nephew, John Heilmann, Jr., and their families.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2.-Mary-Heilmann-Hyde-Street-San-Francisco-CA-1979-photo-by-Mark-MagillFOR-GALLERY.jpeg?w=400\")
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\n\tMary Heilmann<\/a>, an influential abstract painter who received her first solo exhibition in a New York museum in her 60s, died at 86 on Friday in Riverhead, New York. Her studio announced<\/a> the news in an Instagram posting, adding that she died \u201cdue to complications from a fall.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHeilmann was a pioneering abstract painter who blended elements from pop culture, craft, and art history with ease and wit. In the catalog for Heilmann\u2019s 2008 retrospective at the New Museum\u2014also her first solo at a New York institution\u2014art critic Dave Hickey wrote, \u201cThe canons of geometric abstraction, Color Field painting, and Minimalism are honored in the spirit but not in the letter. In Heilmann\u2019s synthesis, they are straightforwardly looted as available precedents.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tThat exhibition had already appeared at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California and the Contemporary Art Museum Houston and received much acclaim. Prior to that show, she had received a survey at the ICA Boston in 1990 and the exhibition \u201cAll Tomorrows Parties\u201d at the Vienna Secession in Austria. She had also exhibited in the 1972, 1989, and 2008 editions of the Whitney Biennial.<\/p>\n\n
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