Deborah Remington (June 25, 1930 – April 21, 2010) was an American abstract painter. Her most notable work is characterized as

Hard-edge painting Hard-edge painting (also referred to as Hard Edge or Hard-edged) is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between color areas. Color areas often consist of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstra ...

abstraction. She became a part of the San Francisco Bay Area's

Beat Beat, beats, or beating may refer to: Common uses * Assault, inflicting physical harm or unwanted physical contact * Battery (crime), a criminal offense involving unlawful physical contact * Battery (tort), a civil wrong in common law of inte ...

scene in the 1950s. In 1965, she moved to New York where her style solidified and her career grew substantially. A twenty-year retrospective of her work was exhibited at the Newport Harbor Art Museum in California, in 1983. Her work was a part of more than thirty solo exhibition and hundreds of group exhibitions including three

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

annuals. She was the descendant of artist

Frederic Remington Frederic Sackrider Remington (October 4, 1861 – December 26, 1909) was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in the genre of Western American Art. His works are known for depicting the Western United Sta ...

Biography

Remington was born in 1930 and grew up in

Haddonfield, New Jersey Haddonfield is a borough (New Jersey), borough located in Camden County, New Jersey, Camden County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 12,550, an increase of 957 (+8.3%) from the ...

. She was the daughter of the late Malcolm VanDyke and Hazel (née Stewart) Remington. With an early inclination towards art, she enrolled in classes at the

Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

as a teenager. In 1955, she received her BFA from the

San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a Private college, private art school, college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mis ...

where members of the faculty included

Clyfford Still Clyfford Still (November 30, 1904 – June 23, 1980) was an American Painting, painter, and one of the leading figures in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, who developed a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediat ...

, David Park,

Hassel Smith Hassel Smith (24 April 1915 – 2 January 2007) was an American artist and teacher. He is considered to have been one of the USA's foremost West Coast artists, emerging in the decade after World War II as an innovative, potent, witty and often ...

, and

Jack Spicer Jack Spicer (January 30, 1925 – August 17, 1965) was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, ''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer'' won the American Book Award for poetry. ...

, among others. By the time she graduated from the Institute, she had become affiliated with the Bay Area's Beat scene. In 1954, she was one of six painters and poets, and the only woman, who founded the now legendary 6 Gallery in San Francisco. After graduation, Remington spent two years traveling and living in Japan, Southeast Asia, and India. While in Japan she studied classical and contemporary calligraphy and earned money by teaching English and tutoring actors. This led to some work acting in B movies, including the film "Nightmare's Bad Dream". Returning to the United States, she took up painting more seriously. She began to exhibit her work at the Dilexi Gallery in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

and had solo shows in 1962, 1963, and 1965. In 1965, Remington moved to New York City. She had her first solo exhibition in NYC in 1966 at the Bykert Gallery at 15 W. 57th Street in Manhattan. She had four solo shows there between 1967 and 1974.Deborah Remington
. David Richard Gallery. Retrieved August 28, 2016. In 1983 Remington had a twenty-year retrospective exhibition that opened at the Newport Harbor Museum in California. This exhibition later traveled to the Oakland Museum (today, the

Oakland Museum of California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...

). In 1984 she received 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 ...

. She was elected to the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Frederick Styles Agate, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, an ...

in 1999, and in the same year was the recipient of a

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 ...

Grant.

Death

Remington died April 21, 2010, in

Moorestown, New Jersey Moorestown is a Township (New Jersey), township in Burlington County, New Jersey, Burlington County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is an eastern suburb of Philadelphia and geographically part of the South Jersey region of the state. As of ...

, of cancer, aged 79. She was interred at Haddonfield Baptist Cemetery in Haddonfield, New Jersey.

Selected collections

Remington's work has been collected by numerous institutions both in the United States and abroad: the

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...

, Illinois; the

Auckland War Memorial Museum The Auckland War Memorial Museum (), also known as Auckland Museum, is one of New Zealand's most important museums and war memorials. Its neoclassical architecture, neoclassical building constructed in the 1920s and 1950s, stands on Observatory ...

, New Zealand; the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

, Paris; the

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen () is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from its two most important donors, Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. The museum is located a ...

, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; the

Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

, Paris; the

Columbus Museum of Art The Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Formed in 1878 as the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts (its name until 1978), it was the first art museum to register its charter with the state of Ohio. The museum collec ...

, Columbus, Ohio; the

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA, formerly abbreviated as BAM/PFA) are a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and film archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Lawrence Rinder was Director ...

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, California; the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...

(formerly National Museum of American Art), Washington, D.C.;

The National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

, Washington, D.C. and the

, New York.

Awards and recognition

In 1999, Remington was elected to the

and received a

Grant that same year. She was awarded a National Endowment Fellowship from 1979 to 1980. From 1973 to 1981, Remington was a

Tamarind Tamarind (''Tamarindus indica'') is a Legume, leguminous tree bearing edible fruit that is indigenous to tropical Africa and naturalized in Asia. The genus ''Tamarindus'' is monotypic taxon, monotypic, meaning that it contains only this spe ...

Fellow Artist-in-Residence.

Legacy

In 2016 her work was included in the exhibition ''Women of Abstract Expressionism'' organized by the

Denver Art Museum The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With an encyclopedic collection of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums betwe ...

. In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition '' Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970'' at the

Whitechapel Gallery The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery in Whitechapel on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The original building, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opened in 1901 as one of the fi ...

in London.

References

External links

Art in America reviewDeborah Remington
on Rehistoricizing The Time Around Abstract Expressionism
Parrasch Heijnen Gallery Deborah Remington: A Life In Drawing Exhibition

Parts & Labor Beacon Gallery Davina Semo and Deborah Remington Exhibition
{{DEFAULTSORT:Remington, Deborah 1930 births 2010 deaths American abstract artists American women printmakers Artists from New York (state) Deaths from cancer in New Jersey American contemporary painters People from Haddonfield, New Jersey San Francisco Art Institute alumni University of the Arts (Philadelphia) alumni 20th-century American women painters 20th-century American painters 20th-century American printmakers 21st-century American women