Grace Hartigan did everything right by the macho standards of the New York art world of the 1950s: drank like a fish, slept around like a sailor on shore leave, starved like a hobo (ketchup soup!), abandoned offspring like a harp seal, painted like a maniac and even, for a while, used a male name (George). Her paintings—big colorful abstractions with shards of real life sliced into them—were snapped up by the Museum of Modern Art and private collectors. But unlike her friends Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Larry Rivers and Philip Guston, Hartigan (1922-2008) fell into obscurity. Today…
Article source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-studio-of-her-own-1432318425