Loren MacIver (February 2, 1909 – May 3, 1998) was an American painter and the first woman represented in the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

's permanent collection.

Personal life

Loren MacIver was born in New York in 1909. Her father, Charles Augustus Paul Newman, was a physician, and her mother was Julia McIvers, whose name she kept but modified. At ten years old, she would attend Saturday art classes at the

Art Students League The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may study f ...

."Maciver, Loren." (n.d.): Art Full Text Biographies. Web. 3 Mar. 2016. She claimed that attending these classes for only one year was the only institutional learning she had received her whole career. In 1929 she married poet and critic Lloyd Frankenburg.

Work

MacIver's work ranges from naturalistic to abstract, but consistent throughout her work is the skill with which she depicts light. She first began showing her work in group exhibitions in a few galleries and art associations from 1933 to 1937. She worked for the

Federal Art Project The Federal Art Project (1935–1943) was a New Deal program to fund the visual arts in the United States. Under national director Holger Cahill, it was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administratio ...

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

(FAP/WPA). The director of the FAP/WPA,

Holger Cahill Sveinn Kristján Bjarnarsson (January 13, 1887 – July 8, 1960), also known as Edgar Holger Cahill, was an Icelandic-American curator, writer and arts administrator. He served as the national director of the Federal Art Project of the Works Prog ...

, wrote of MacIver's work saying, "In its fusion of the interests of the world of fact and the world of feeling, Miss MacIver's work is richly imaginative, and delightful in its sensitive, personalized expression". She ripened in her personal artistic style. She explained her method in 1946: "Quite simple things can lead to discovery. This is what I would like to do with painting: starting with simple things to lead the eye by various manipulations of colors, objects and tensions toward a transformation and a reward". Her work was even shown in popular magazines like ''Fortune'' (1944) and ''Town & Country'' (1947). In 1947–48, she was given mural commission to decorate the first-class lounge of the S.S. Argentina luxury liner and the dining rooms of the American Export Lines ships. MacIver's work was highly praised during her life, in a ''New York Times'' article her method of incorporating French elements into her work was highlighted, "Miss MacIver, also an American who has lived for many years in France, is an artist in her own right and has been eminently capable of taking the French ingredients, assimilating and creating out of them a taste, a style, and at times, a vision all her own". In her later years by the 1970s, she had begun reinterpreting previous themes and her work was considered no longer innovative and the

Pierre Matisse Pierre Matisse (June 13, 1900 – August 10, 1989) was a French-American art dealer active in New York City. He was the youngest child of French painter Henri Matisse. Background and early years Pierre Matisse was born in Bohain-en-Vermandois on ...

Gallery took her work down. After her husband's death in 1975, she painted little but did continue showing several of her pieces in art galleries. Then in 1998, the

Tibor de Nagy Gallery The Tibor de Nagy Gallery is an art gallery located on Rivington Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. History Tibor de Nagy Gallery is among the earliest modern art galleries in New York City. The gallery was founded by Tibor de Nagy (1 ...

hung its first exhibition of her work only months before her death. This is what I would like to do with painting: starting with simple things, to lead the eye by various manipulations of colors, objects and tensions toward a transformation and reward" by playing with simple aspects of paintings, she is able to encompass them all to create something that provokes the viewer to sense something new. In a ''New York Times'' article, her mastery of the foundations of art are highlighted, "Completely at home with pictorial haute cuisine, Miss MacIver has for some time been mixing up the

soufflé A soufflé () is a baked egg dish originating in France in the early 18th century. Combined with various other ingredients, it can be served as a savoury main dish or sweetened as a dessert. The word ''soufflé'' is the past participle of the Fr ...

s and sauces béarnaise of futurism, sur realism and cubism, and adding more than a prodigious pinch of impressionism" MacIver is a master of her trade, and those around her were witness to it MacIver is the first woman represented in the

's permanent collection, one of her works having been acquired by director

Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Alfred Hamilton Barr Jr. (January 28, 1902 – August 15, 1981) was an American art historian and the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. From that position, he was one of the most influential forces in the development of ...

in 1935. MacIver's works are in the permanent collections of a number of institutions, including the

Addison Gallery of American Art Addison may refer to: Places Canada * Addison, Ontario, a community United States * Addison, Alabama, a town * Addison, Illinois, a village * Addison, Kentucky, an unincorporated community * Addison, Maine, a town * Addison, Michigan, a vil ...

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 ...

Baltimore Museum of Art The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of modern art, ...

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed ...

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...

The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the third-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5.36 million v ...

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art art gallery, museum near Water Tower Place in the Near North Side, Chicago, Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is on ...

The Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, and includes over 200,000 works of arc ...

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.,

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) is an List of art museums#North America, art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at ...

The Phillips Collection The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the grandson of James H. Laughli ...

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...

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 ...

, and

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is an art museum in New Haven, Connecticut. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University. Although it embraces all cultures and period ...

References

External links

*
Loren MacIver at the Museum of Modern Art
{{DEFAULTSORT:MacIver, Loren 1909 births 1998 deaths 20th-century American painters Painters from New York City Art Students League of New York alumni Federal Art Project artists 20th-century American women painters

Personal life

Work

References

Further reading

External links