Happy 100th Birthday, Hedda Sterne!

Today, August 4th, is the 100th birthday of Hedda Sterne, a pioneering artist who happened to be a woman. Congratulations, Hedda, on reaching this milestone and thank you for paving the way for those of us who are women and want to be taken seriously as artists.

Hedda Sterne in the 1950s as photographed by Margaret Bourke-White. (Image from "Uninterrupted Flux: Hedda Sterne," a catalog of a retrospective of Sterne's work, published in 2006 by the Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, edited by Karen Hewitt, exhibition curated by Sarah L. Eckhardt. Most of the images in this post are from this catalog.)

I have written about Hedda's work and career earlier in this blog, as follows:
Who Was That Woman, April 1, 2009
A Virtual Connection Made Real, March 8, 2010
Hedda Sterne: Part Two, March 11, 2010

I hope you will take a look at these earlier posts because they try to summarize Hedda's very interesting life and career.

My interest in Hedda began when I was writing my long series of posts on Rothko back in March and April 2009. I came across the famous Life Magazine photo of "The Irascibles" and became curious about the only woman in the picture. That photo has haunted Hedda throughout her life and become her most enduring public image. Through my posts, I tried to publicize other images of Hedda that portrayed her as the serious and independent-minded artist she was.

Photo by Nina Leen published in Life Magazine in 1951. 

L to R: Theodoros Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, Mark Rothko, Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Rotert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlied, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne. The protesting artists were termed "The Irascibles."

Last February, during the unusually heavy snowstorm that New York received, I met Hedda's niece Veronique Lindenberg, a resident of Paris who was in New York visiting Hedda. During that meeting where Veronique, my friend Binnie Birstein and I had lunch, Veronique very kindly presented me with a copy of the now out-of-print catalog of Uninterrupted Flux, Hedda's 2006 retrospective exhibition at the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois. Having the catalog meant a great deal to me because I could see the range of Hedda's work and get an idea of her accomplishments unrelated to the Irascibles photo.

The catalog from Uninterrupted Flux

While Hedda's body has been subject to the infirmities of her great age, her mind and spirit remain strong. I hope that you will join me in congratulating her on her birthday and thanking her for pursuing a unique artistic path during her long life. Veronique is with her in New York and has told me that she will read birthday wishes to Hedda, so if you would like to pass those along, please add your comment to this post.

Hedda Sterne, about 1963-65, photograph by Theodore Brauner, from the Uninterrupted Flux catalog.