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Amaranth Ehrenhalt"Untitled, " Amaranth Ehrenhalt, Colorful Abstract, Female Artist1994
1994
About the Item
Amaranth Ehrenhalt
Untitled, 1994
Signed and dated lower left
Oil on canvas
24 x 20 inches
Provenance:
Private Collection, Long Island
Amaranth Ehrenhalt was born in 1928 in Newark, New Jersey and grew up in a Jewish family in Philadelphia. She loved painting from an early age and was soon placed in the “creatively gifted” Saturday morning program at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She carried on with a full-tuition scholarship at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she graduated in 1951 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. In parallel, she attended an art history class at the Barnes Foundation one afternoon per week. After graduation, Ehrenhalt was determined to travel to Paris and from there hitchhiked to Morocco, painting her impressions in her sketchbook as she went. She continued to Rome, where she taught English and continued to paint. Upon her return to the United States, Ehrenhalt settled in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, New York. Her nights were spent at the Cedar Tavern where she met Abstract Expressionist artists such as Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning. The night before Ehrenhalt left on what was meant to be a short trip to Paris, De Kooning told her: “As soon as you get back, call me. We’ll have dinner.”
However, Ehrenhalt never returned to New York, as she got sucked into the bustling, creative Parisian life. In Paris, she frequented Le Select, a café that attracted many artists, including Yves Klein and Alberto Giacometti, among others. It was in Paris that she met her husband, a fellow American artist with whom she had two children. They would show their works in their home and live off the sales, until their divorce 15 years later. Though life in Paris was a struggle at times, the city had so much to offer as well, and Ehrenhalt became close with a circle of expatriate American artists among whom were Shirley Jaffe, Sam Francis and Joan Mitchell. Another important connection was Sonia Delauney, who was deeply impressed with Ehrenhalt’s art and became her patron by arranging for her to charge art supplies to her account. “I didn’t have money, but I always had paint,” Ehrenhalt once said. Ehrenhalt lived in Paris from 1950 till 2007 but always travelled a great deal, exhibiting in France, California and New York.
Ehrenhalt described herself as a colorist. She once said: “I like to think about my work as a symphony on a flat surface.” Through her energetic colors, fluent brushstrokes and bustling compositions, she processed all her experiences and surroundings while also slipping in new forms of figuration. Her work expands beyond merely the canvas and takes its shape in drawings, prints, watercolors, tapestries, mosaics, ceramics, murals, sculptures, poetry and prose. In the late ‘90s, Ehrenhalt took on a new challenge, namely doing individual works that could be configured in more than one way. She called these her “Double Look” paintings since she would create diptychs in two different configurations, using the process of inversion.
Ehrenhalt returned to the United States in 2008, in order to be closer to her extended family. After decades of living in Paris, the transition to the US art scene proved a rude awakening. Having been in a smaller, European country, she had experienced much more support. In the US, there were far fewer opportunities for an artist still producing at full speed later in her career. It was hard to survive as an artist, especially since Ehrenhalt came from a generation where women artists were either expected to be financially independent or to have connections with an important male artist.
Still, Ehrenhalt was never deterred from producing her art, and kept on working. In 2006, she was part of a show at the Sidney Mishkin Gallery entitled Encore: Five Abstract Expressionists, with the subtitle: “Less Well-Known Figures Emerge, Extending the Canon.” Here, she finally began to be recognised as an important member of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Eventually, her works were acquired by American collections including Philip Morris, Downey Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum. Ehrenhalt was also included in the 2009 book American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism: Style is Timely Art is Timeless. She is represented by Anita Shapolsky Gallery in New York, which continues to show her multifaceted and unique visual language. As expressed by Joseph Hirshhorn: “What makes an artist important is the fact that she develops her own language, which is what Amaranth is doing.”
- Creator:Amaranth Ehrenhalt (1936, American)
- Creation Year:1994
- Dimensions:Height: 24 in (60.96 cm)Width: 20 in (50.8 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:New York, NY
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU1841212025642
Amaranth Ehrenhalt
When multidisciplinary Abstract Expressionist artist Amaranth Ehrenhalt first moved from Philadelphia to New York City in the 1950s she unintentionally lived out the “starving artist” lifestyle. She made her paintings on the floor, but not in order to replicate the technique attributed to American painter Jackson Pollock. Owing to her modest financial situation, she simply didn't own a table.
Ehrenhalt graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1951 and attended a weekly course at the Barnes Foundation. There, she basked in the owner's large Parisian art collection and became deeply enamored with French artwork. It should come as no surprise that when a friend offered to trade a round trip to Paris for a portrait, Ehrenhalt jumped at the opportunity. Dutch-American painter Willem de Kooning — a fellow New Yorker at the time — invited her to have dinner upon her return, but after experiencing the Parisian art scene, she canceled her return trip and the two never shared that dinner. Ehrenhalt forged connections with Joan Mitchell, Alberto Giacometti and Yves Klein in the French capital, and remained in the country for over 40 years.
In her later years, Ehrenhalt returned to New York. She often traveled with her son, enraging the security guards at many of the world’s finest museums. From the Louvre in Paris to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, her son, Caradoc remembers guards running and shouting at the sight of Ehrenhalt leaning a nose-length away from the art, her pointer finger hovering closer to the work explaining techniques and details behind the piece. Many of these trips were not just proof of how well-educated and experienced she was, but also lessons in friendship as she knew many of the artists personally.
Ehrenhalt’s work appeared in group exhibitions and solo exhibitions in Paris, California, Italy and New York. Five of her paintings from the mid-20th century were featured in “Encore: Five Abstract Expressionists,” which opened at Baruch College’s Sidney Mishkin Gallery in 2006.
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