Nina Leen: Life magazine’s portrait of the Abstract Expressionist artists known as ‘The Irascibles,’ 1951. Front row: Theodore Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, and Mark Rothko; middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, and Bradley Walker Tomlin; back row: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, and Hedda Sterne
Hedda Sterne, an artist whose association with the Abstract Expressionists became fixed forever when she appeared prominently in a now-famous 1951 Life magazine photograph of the movement’s leading lights, died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 100.
Read the full New York Times Obituary here.
Sterne's passing has resulted in Nina Leen's photograph being published in numerous articles and obituaries about Sterne. In December, 2010 The New York Review of Books had this long essay by Sarah Boxer explaining her life, art and why she did not have the same career as the others in this famous photograph.
Opening May 6, Monroe Gallery of Photography presents "Composing The Artist". This exhibition of classic photographs portrays iconic Artists and Writer, and will include Nina Leen's historic photograph.
