Anna Conway (born 1973) is an American visual artist based in New York City and known for enigmatic oil paintings that depict uneasy, absurdist moments descending on isolated, ordinary individuals.Churner, Rachel
"Anna Conway,"
''Artforum'', February 2018. Retrieved March 18, 2020.Boucher, Brian. "Anna Conway at Guild and Greyshkul," ''Art in America'', September 2007.''The New Yorker''. "Art in Review", April 2, 2007. Retrieved March 18, 2020. She combines a style identified as precise and methodical with detailed observation,''Domus''

Domus, March 2016. Retrieved March 18, 2020. "an air of surrealist suspension," and a narrative sense that critics characterize as elusive, metaphysical and "imbued with cinematic suggestion."Paderni, Marinella. "Anna Conway," ''Flash Art'', April 2016. Conway has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at

MoMA PS1 MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution at 2201 Jackson Avenue in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens in New York City, United States. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, th ...

, the

American Academy of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 1994 in Kansas City, Missouri. With a $5 million annual budget and approximately 75,000 visitors each year, it is Missouri's first and largest contemporary museum. Founders The core of the museum's per ...

, University Art Museum at Albany,

Fralin Museum of Art The Fralin Museum of Art is an art museum at the University of Virginia. Before 2012, it was known as the University of Virginia Art Museum. It occupies the historic Thomas H. Bayly Building on Rugby Road in Charlottesville, Virginia, a short dis ...

, and

Collezione Maramotti The Collezione Maramotti is the private collection of contemporary art of Achille Maramotti, who founded Max Mara. It is housed in the former premises of the company in Reggio Emilia, in Emilia Romagna in central Italy, converted for the purp ...

(Italy), among other venues.Eleey, Peter
"Greater New York,"
''Frieze'', May 2005, p. 114. Retrieved March 18, 2020.''Artforum''
"American Academy of Arts and Letters Announces 2008 Art Awards,"
''Artforum'', March 19, 2008. Retrieved March 25, 2020.Dunbar, Elizabeth et al (ed). ''Phantasmania'', Kansas City, MO: Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007.Fiore, Fiorella. "Slow and Silent, Anna Conway," ''Il Giornale Dell'Arte'', March 2016, p. 35. She has been recognized with a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

(2014),''Artforum''
"2014 Guggenheim Fellows Announced,"
''Artforum'', April 10, 2014. Retrieved March 25, 2020.John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
"Anna Conway,"
Fellows. Retrieved March 18, 2020. two

Pollock-Krasner Foundation The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing funding to visual artists internationally to further their artistic practices. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expr ...

Awards (2011, 2005),Pollock-Krasner Foundation
"Anna Conway,"
Artists. Retrieved March 18, 2020. and the

William L. Metcalf Award (2008).''Art Review''. "100 Future Greats 2005," December/January 2006.

Early life and career

Conway was born in

Durango, Colorado Durango is the home rule city that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of La Plata County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 19,071 at the 2020 United States census. Durango is the home of Fort Lewis College ...

in 1973 and grew up in

Foxborough, Massachusetts Foxborough is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Located in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, it is about southwest of Boston. The population was 18,618 at the 2020 census. "Foxborough" is the official spelling of th ...

. She studied art in New York City, earning a BFA from

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly known as Cooper Union, is a private college on Cooper Square in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-s ...

(1997) and an MFA from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

(2002). After graduating, she rented a studio in Brooklyn and gained early recognition for shows in New York at Artemis Greenberg Van Doren and Guild and Greyshkul in 2004, and at MoMA PS1 and Phillips de Pury & Company in 2005.Ribas, Joao. "She’s Come Undone," ''Time Out'' New York, July 1, 2004.Comita, Jenny. "Higher Learning," ''W'', March 2005.''Harper's Bazaar'' (Japan)."10 Artists: PS1," July 2005. Retrieved March 18, 2020.''Beaux Arts''. "P.S. 1 Review," July 2005. In subsequent years, she has had solo exhibitions at Fergus McCaffrey, American Contemporary and Guild & Greyshkul (all New York City) and Collezione Maramotti.Sutton, Kate
"Critics Pick: Anna Conway,"
''Artforum'', December 2017. Retrieved March 18, 2020.''The New Yorker''
"Anna Conway,"
April 22, 2013. Retrieved March 18, 2020.Carriero, Marcello. "Anna Conway, Contradictions Concealed in the Detail," ''Arte E Critica'', March 2016.Sacchi, Annachiara. "The Worlds of Anna Conway: Portrait of Time," ''La Lettura'', March 2016. In addition to her painting practice, Conway has taught at Cooper Union, Columbia University,

Parsons School of Design The Parsons School of Design is a private art and design college under The New School located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art ...

, and

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn in New York City, United States. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls nearly 14,000 students on a campus in the Midwood and Flatbush sections of Brooklyn as of fall ...

.Cooper Union
''The School of Art Annual Report (2013-2014)''
2014. Retrieved March 18, 2020.Hoffman, Claire

''The New York Times'', May 24, 2004. Sect. B, p. 3. Retrieved March 18, 2020. She lives and works in New York City.Baldwin, Rosecrans. "Anna Conway, Somebody Call Someone," ''The Morning News'', April 24, 2013.

Work and reception

Conway's art has been featured in ''

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...

'',Fry, Naomi
"Anna Conway,"
�''Artforum'', March, 2007. Retrieved March 18, 2020. '' Art in America'', ''

Flash Art ''Flash Art'' is a contemporary art magazine, and an Italian and international publishing house. Originally published bilingually, both in Italian and in English, since 1978 is published in two separate editions, Flash Art Italia (Italian) and ...

'', ''

Frieze In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...

'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'',Smith, Roberta. "A Gallery Goes Out in a Burst of Energy," ''The New York Times'', February 6, 2009. Retrieved March 18, 2020. ''

Hyperallergic ''Hyperallergic'' is an online arts magazine, based in Brooklyn, New York. Founded by the art critic Hrag Vartanian and his husband Veken Gueyikian in October 2009, the site describes itself as a "forum for serious, playful, and radical thinki ...

'',Rodney, Seph
"Grim Vistas of Present and Future Dystopias,"
''Hyperallergic'', December, 2017. Retrieved March 18, 2020. and ''New American Paintings'',Zevitas, Steven (ed). "Anna Conway," ''New American Paintings'', Issue #74, 2008 Retrieved March 18, 2020. among many publications.Goodrich, John. "Art in Brief," ''The New York Sun'', July 5, 2007.Zevitas, Steven
"Ten Must See Painting Shows,"
''Huffington Post'', July 2012. Retrieved March 18, 2020. In a 2007 review, ''The New Yorker'' compared her work to the "fantastic, alienating styles of Magritte,

Gregory Crewdson Gregory Crewdson (born September 26, 1962) is an American photographer who makes large-scale, cinematic, psychologically charged prints of staged scenes set in suburban landscapes and interiors. He directs a large production and lighting crew to ...

and

Jeff Wall Jeffrey Wall, Order of Canada, OC, Royal Society of Canada, RSA (born September 29, 1946) is a Canadian photographer. He is artist best known for his large-scale back-lit Cibachrome photographs and art history writing. Early in his career, he h ...

, with strange tableaux suggesting both religious miracles translated into the everyday and "the apocalypse rendered in miniature," rather than cinemaplex, scale. These paintings often present workaday men reduced to tiny figures in quietly mysterious, absurd scenes suggesting futility, inscrutable inner states and back stories, and a sense of suburban normalcy gone wrong.Heartney, Eleanor. "Return to the Real?" ''Art in America'', 2006, p. 85–9.Ho, Christopher. "In View: Greater New York 2005," ''Modern Painters'', May 2005. Critics such as ''Hyperallergics Seph Rodney suggest that Conway's work in the later 2010s carries a more pervasive, foreboding quiet, reflecting both a

dystopia A dystopia (lit. "bad place") is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. It is an imagined place (possibly state) in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmen ...

n fear and desire for the scarcity of humanity, concerns about sustainability and social inequality, and the heightened tension of a more ominous, paranoid era. ''Artforum'' critic Kate Sutton writes that Conway's "pristine execution echoes the would-be flawlessness of her settings," which she subtly intrudes upon with seemingly accidental figures and evocations of the past suggesting loss amid sleek, contemporary modernism (e.g., ''Haniwa'', 2017). Rachel Churner describes these paintings as the visual equivalents of spy novels "marked by the abundance and clarity of their details" and the thrill of deciphering what is significant and what is merely mundane.

References

External links

Anna Conway official website

Anna Conway
Guggenheim Fellow page
Anna Conway
artist page, Fergus McCaffrey Gallery
Interview with Anna Conway
{{DEFAULTSORT:Conway, Anna 21st-century American painters Painters from New York City Cooper Union alumni Columbia University School of the Arts alumni People from Foxborough, Massachusetts 1973 births Living people 20th-century American women painters 20th-century American painters People from Durango, Colorado Painters from Massachusetts Painters from Colorado Cooper Union faculty Columbia University faculty Parsons School of Design faculty Brooklyn College faculty 21st-century American women painters