Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton
May 25 - Jun 22, 2019
B.S., Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY
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An Immersive Art Experience For You
New York, b.1931
Martha Edelheit
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Martha Edelheit was born New York City in 1931, where she lived until moving to Sweden in 1993. She currently lives outside of Stockholm. She is known as a pioneering feminist artist whose work of the 1960s addresses female desire, the body, and skin as a double “canvas” for tattoo imagery.
Edelheit studied at the University of Chicago, New York University and Columbia University in the 1950s. Important teachers included artist Michael Loew and art historian Meyer Schapiro. She established herself in the center of the downtown avant-garde, becoming a member of the Tenth Street artist-run space, the Reuben Gallery, where her first solo show was held in 1960. She, like other members Jim Dine, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenberg, and Robert Whitman, were pushing at the boundaries and definitions of...
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Martha Edelheit was born New York City in 1931, where she lived until moving to Sweden in 1993. She currently lives outside of Stockholm. She is known as a pioneering feminist artist whose work of the 1960s addresses female desire, the body, and skin as a double “canvas” for tattoo imagery.
Edelheit studied at the University of Chicago, New York University and Columbia University in the 1950s. Important teachers included artist Michael Loew and art historian Meyer Schapiro. She established herself in the center of the downtown avant-garde, becoming a member of the Tenth Street artist-run space, the Reuben Gallery, where her first solo show was held in 1960. She, like other members Jim Dine, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenberg, and Robert Whitman, were pushing at the boundaries and definitions of sculpture, painting, and art-making through Happenings and experimental objects. Edelheit exhibited her “extension” paintings which break the frame of the work and utilize utilitarian objects. Her second solo show, in 1961, was held at another significant nucleus of experimental art, the Judson Gallery.
By 1962, Edelheit began to explore the subject of tattooing in her work. She related to the writings of Claude Levi-Strauss. In his 1955 memoir, Tristes Tropiques, Levi-Strauss speculates that tattooing was the first art, before cave art, and that the human body was the first canvas. The flesh of the figures Edelheit depicts become places where the dreams and fantasies of the models emerge. Edelheit’s paintings of tattooed figures led to her depictions of circus performers, which have a frank sexuality; the contorted bodies and body parts, along with their costumed appearance, suggest sadomasochistic play.
Edelheit’s erotic works on paper, and her series of monumental “Flesh Wall” paintings were exhibited at the Byron Gallery in the mid-1960s. This work prompted Allan Kaprow to write an article for the Village Voice addressing the significance of women’s contemporary erotic art. Edelheit became an essential voice whose work implicitly challenged social expectations of women as well as formalist paradigms and traditional notions of figurative painting and the nude.
Artworks
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Circus Tree
1961
Ink and watercolor on rice paper
11.75h x 17.75w in (29.85h x 45.09w cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Eric Firestone Gallery, New York
Study for Flesh Wall (Flesh Wall with Drawing Board)
1964
Ink and watercolor on rice paper
11.25h x 8.75w in (28.58h x 22.23w cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Eric Firestone Gallery, New York
Tattooed Lady
1962
Oil on canvas
45h x 50w x 1.50d in (114.30h x 127w x 3.81d cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Eric Firestone Gallery, New York
The Life and Loves of the Lizard
1962
Ink and watercolor on rice paper
11.88h x 17.50w in (30.16h x 44.45w cm)
Courtesy of the artist and Eric Firestone Gallery, New York
Circus Tree, 1961
Related Categories
Curriculum Vitae
B.S., Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY
School of General Studies, Columbia University, New York, NY
Michael Loew (Studio classes)
Flesh Walls: Tales from the 60s, Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, NY
Artifact Gallery, New York, NY
Piteå Konsthall, Piteå, Sweden
Go Figure!, Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, NY
Currents: Abortion, A.I.R. Gallery, New York, NY
Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952–1965, Grey Gallery, New York University, New York, NY
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Curriculum Vitae
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B.S., Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY
School of General Studies, Columbia University, New York, NY
Michael Loew (Studio classes)
New York University, New York, NY
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Flesh Walls: Tales from the 60s, Eric Firestone Gallery, New York, NY
Artifact Gallery, New York, NY
Piteå Konsthall, Piteå, Sweden
SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
Galleria BE’19, Helsinki, Finland
SARKA Museum, Loimaa, Finland
Villa Landes, Kimito, Finland
Galleri Cupido, Stockholm, Sweden
Galleria BE’19, Helsinki, Finland
Konstpaus, Ekerö, Sweden
Galleri Strömbom, Uppsala, Sweden
Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm, Sweden
Medborgarhuset, Smedstorp, Sweden
Go Figure!, Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, NY
Currents: Abortion, A.I.R. Gallery, New York, NY
Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952–1965, Grey Gallery, New York University, New York, NY
Annual Group Exhibition, SOHO20, Brooklyn, NY
The Sister Chapel: An Essential Feminist Collaboration, Rowan University Art Gallery, Glassboro, NJ
Annual Group Exhibition: Part 2, SOHO20, Brooklyn, NY
From the Other Side, SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
Relational Ground: Defying the Status Quo, SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
Always/Never, SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
Art in Boxes 2012, AG Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Groundbreaking: The Women of the Sylvia Sleigh Collection, Rowan University Art Gallery, Glassboro, NJ
Cluster–A Group Exhibition: Object and Space (Alexis Duque, Martha Nilsson Edelheit, Peter Janssen), AG Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Folles d’Hiver, SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
Between the Lines: Exhibition of SOHO20 Member Artists, SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
INPLACE: The Annual Exhibition of SOHO20 Artists, SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
Self Portraits, Ideas, Images, Structures, SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
Small Works, SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
FallOut, SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
Member Artists Group Show, SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
The Sister Chapel: An Essential Feminist Collaboration, Rowan University Art Gallery, Glassboro, NJ
Member Artists Group Show, SOHO20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
Member Artists Group Show, SOHO21 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
Member Artists Group Show, SOHO22 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
Member Artists Group Show, SOHO23 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY
"Hats, Bottles & Bones," Inventing Downtown: Lives of Artists, Part 2, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, NY
“The Albino Queen and Sno White in Triplicate (1973, S8, 22'),” Petzel Gallery, New York, NY
“Hats, Bottles & Bones,” RARE, New York, NY
2nd Prize, Juried Invitational, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA
(~1986) NYSCA Grant, The New York State Council on the Arts, New York, NY
(~1976) NYSCA and NEA Matching Grants, The New York State Council on the Arts, New York NY and the National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, DC
New York Public Library, New York, NY
Piteå Commune, Piteå, Sweden
Rowan University Art Gallery, Glassboro, NJ
Montclair State College, Montclair, NJ (Guest Lecturer– Film)
New School, New York, NY (Guest Lecturer–Film)
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (Artist in Residence)
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH (Artist in Residence)
Wilson College, Chambersburg, PA (Artist in Residence)
California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA (Visiting Artist)
Exhibition Catalogue, Martha Nilsson Edelheit: Erotic Circus, Artifact Gallery, New York, NY (Essay: Rachel Middleman)
Exhibition Catalogue, Martha Nilsson Edelheit, Konsthallen Piteå, Sweden (Essays: “Grannens flock med Gotlandsår” by Christian Chambert and “Martha Nilsson Edelheit in Sweden” by Andrew D. Hottle)
Exhibition Catalogue, Martha Nilsson Edelheit, Galleria BE’19, Helsinki, Finland (Essay: “Martha Nilsson Edelheit’s Vibrant Pastures” by Andrew D. Hottle)
Exhibition Catalogue, Martha Nilsson Edelheit, Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm (Essay: Sara Lidman)
Jennifer Krasinski, “Exploring New York’s Century Boom of Artist-Run Galleries,” Village Voice, February 28, 2017, https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/02/28/exploring-new-yorks-midcentury-boom-of-artist-run-galleries/ MARTHA NI
Blake Gopnik, “Martha Edelheit, Another Postwar Talent Left Out of Art History’s Storyline,” Opinion, Artnet News, February 1, 2017, https://news.artnet.com/opinion/martha-edelheitgrey-gallery-840995
Ariella Budick, “When Artists Ruled: The Fearless Spirit of 1950s and 60s New York,” Financial Times, Visual Arts, January 13, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/0de70c44-d750-11e6-944be7eb37a6aa8e
Holland Cotter, “When Artists Ran the Show: ‘Inventing Downtown,’ at N.Y.U., New York Times, January 12, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/arts/design/when-artists-ranthe-show-inventing-downtown-at-nyu.html
Melissa Rachleff, Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952–1965 (New York: Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 2017).
Andrew D. Hottle, The Art of the Sister Chapel: Exemplary Women, Visionary Creators, and Feminist Collaboration (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2014).
Rachel Middleman, “A Feminist Avant-Garde: Martha Edelheit’s ‘Erotic Art’ in the 1960s, Konsthistorisk tijdskrift/Journal of Art History (2014): 1–19.
Joyce Kozloff, “Maria Lassnig in New York, 1968–1980,” Hyperallergic, November 8, 2014.
Gail Levin, “Censorship, Politics and Sexual Imagery in the Work of Jewish-American Feminist Artists,” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues 14 (Fall 2007): 63–96.
Richard Meyer, “Hard Targets: Male Bodies, Feminist Art, and the Force of Censorship in the 1970s,” in WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, ed. Lisa Gabrielle Mark (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007), 362–383.
