Amaranth Ehrenhalt
Leighton
1957

Name: Leighton
Brand: Amaranth Ehrenhalt
Price: 6000 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Amaranth Ehrenhalt was a multifaceted artist best known for her paintings. She was part of the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, working first in New York in the early 1950s, and then in Paris for much of the rest of her career. Never afraid to experiment, Ehrenhalt's work may best be described as bold, even aggressive, in execution, composition and even color. She worked across media, including oils, works on paper, prints and etchings, tapestry, design and sculpture. Amaranth Ehrenhalt died on March 16, 2021 in Manhattan. She was 93. The cause was Covid-19. Ehrenhalt moved to Paris early in her career and settled there as an expatriate artist for the next forty-odd years. Le Select Cafe was the place where artists and cognoscenti met. There Ehrenhalt met Beauford Delaney and Yves Klein (for whom she bought baby clothes when he couldn't afford them), among others. Sonia Delaunay bought her painting materials when she had no money. There she befriended Giacometti. And there she exhibited with, among others, Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis, Shirley Jaffe and Norman Bluhm, most recently in 2017 at the Mona Bismarck Foundation in Paris as part of its "American Artists in Paris" exhibition. She was included in the Denver Art Museum's exhibition "Women of Abstract Expressionism" the year after. "Ehrenhalt worked under the radar for much of her career. It's possible that's because she chose to work in Paris when New York was the locus of the art world," said one gallerist. Like many female artists of the period, she was taken less seriously because she was a woman. This story, which Ehrenhalt liked to tell, illustrated that fact: Completed in 1961, her work Jump in and Move Around was shown at an exhibition in Paris in 1962 along with the work of several other artists. The work was signed "Ehrenhalt." John Ashbery, the critic for the International Herald Tribune, reviewed the show and wrote the following: "A key figure among these 31 artists from 14 countries might be the American Ehrenhalt. [Jump In and Move Around is] both an example of New York School abstraction (lush colors, fluent brushwork, bustling composition) and an attempt at a new, possibly eerie, form of figuration." Several weeks later, Ehrenhalt met Ashberry and thanked him for his review. At first, Ashbery could not remember the review, but when she reminded him of the piece, he had this to say: "I never would have reviewed your painting if I had known you were a woman!" That work is now in a French museum collection.

Creator:

Amaranth Ehrenhalt (1936, American)

Creation Year:

1957

Dimensions:

Height: 25.75 in (65.41 cm)Width: 19.5 in (49.53 cm)

Medium:

Watercolor

Movement & Style:

Abstract Expressionist

Period:

1950-1959

Framing:

Framing Options Available

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Lawrence, NY

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU1497214464662

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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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