HARRIET KORMAN
American, 1947

Untitled, 2003
ink on paper
10” × 13”

 

Harriet Korman (born 1947) is an American abstract painter based in New York City, who first gained attention in the early 1970s. She is known for work that embraces improvisation and experimentation within a framework of self-imposed limitations that include simplicity of means, purity of color, and a strict rejection of allusion, illusion, naturalistic light and space, or other translations of reality. Writer John Yau describes Korman as "a pure abstract artist, one who doesn’t rely on a visual hook, cultural association, or anything that smacks of essentialization or the spiritual," a position he suggests few post-Warhol painters have taken. While Korman's work may suggest early twentieth-century abstraction, critics such as Roberta Smith locate its roots among a cohort of early-1970s women artists who sought to reinvent painting using strategies from Process Art, then most associated with sculpture, installation art and performance. Since the 1990s, critics and curators have championed this early work as unjustifiably neglected by a male-dominated 1970s art market and deserving of rediscovery.

Korman has exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museo Rufino Tamayo and MoMA PS1, among other institutions. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and National Endowment for the Arts.

 

 

SOLO SHOWS

2018 • Permeable/ Resistant: Recent Drawings and Paintings, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, US

2015 • Developing Format – Paintings and Drawings 2010-2014, Häusler Contemporary München, DE

2014 • Line or Edge, Line or Color: New Paintings and Drawings, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York, US

2014 • Harriet Korman, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York City, NY, US

2008 • New Paintings, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York, US

2008 • Harriet Korman, Jancar Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, US

2002 • Harriet Korman: Paintings and Drawings from the Early 1970s, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco, CA, US

1994 • Harriet Korman, Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York, US

1977 • Doppelausstellung mit Frank Stella, Galerie m Bochum, DE

1972 • Galerie Ricke, Köln, DE

1970 • Galerie Ricke, Köln, DE

GROUP SHOWS

2018 • And The Stars Look Very Different Today | The art of 1968 and beyond, Häusler Contemporary Zürich, CH

2017 • Painting in due time, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York City, US

2016 • To Sophie, Sonia, Elsa, Hannah..., Häusler Contemporary Zürich, CH

2015 • Weiss – Aspekte einer Farbe in Moderne und Gegenwart, Museum im Kulturspeicher, Würzburg, DE

2015 • A Few Days, Leonnon, Weinberg, Inc., New York City, US

2014 • Time Capsule: Recently Acquired Works from the 1970s and 1980s, Orange County Museum, Newport Beach, US

2014 • 21 & Counting, The Painting Center, New York City, US

2012 • Aufbruch – Malerei und realer Raum, Museum im Kulturspeicher, Würzburg, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, DE

2011 • Of Certain Instability, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, US

2011 • Contemporary Selections: Aligning Abstraction, National Academy Museum, New York, US

2008 • Love Parade 2, Häusler Contemporary München, DE

2007 • The Abstract Impulse: Fifty Years of Abstraction at the National Academy, 1956-2006, New York, US

2007 • Pip Chodorov, Harriet Korman, and Joanna Pousette-Dart, MoMA PS1, New York, US

2006 • High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975, University of North Carolina, Weatherspoon Art Museum, US, u.a.

2005 • Sweet Temptations, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, CH 

1995 • Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, US

1994 • Directions in American Abstraction: A New Decade, Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, Loretto, US

1993 • Bestandsaufnahme X. Die Räumlichkeit der Farbe, Galerie m Bochum, DE

1992 • Harriet Korman, Alfred Leslie, David Rabinowitch, Myron Stout, Flynn, New York, US

1992 • Diamond, Fishman, Heilmann, Korman, Piffaretti, Robert Miller Gallery, New York, US 

1991 • Strategies for a New Painting, Feigen Gallery, Chicago, US

1977 • A Painting show, PS1 MoMA, New York, US

1974 • Recent Abstract Paintings, Pratt Institute, New York, US

1974 • Continuing Abstraction in American Painting, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, US

1971 • Ten young artists: Theodoron awards, Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York, US