Fannie Hillsmith

Fannie Hillsmith (1911 – July 27, 2007) was an American cubist painter.

Personal life

Fannie Hillsmith was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1911. Her grandfather was a painter, as well as one of the founders of the Boston Museum School. Hillsmith would attend in the Boston Museum School for four years.

Hillsmith married the British and American codebreaker Gordon Welchman in 1958. They had met while Hillsmith was on a one-year scholarship from the Boston Museum of Modern Art to study in Europe. Welchman had a home in Massachusetts whilst Hillsmith had homes in New York in New Hampshire. The travelling was said to be a strain on the relationship. The couple divorced in 1970. When Hillsmith died Welchman was described as a "British mathematician" whilst he was a leading light at Bletchley Park who improved Alan Turing's ideas.

Career

Hillsmith moved from Boston to New York City in 1934. Once in New York, she took an interest in vanguard art through her studies and gradually developed an abstract style. Hillsmith studied under such teachers as William Zorach and Yasuo Kuniyoshi for one year while at the Art Students League. She went on to study at New York University at the A. E. Gallatin Collection.

Fannie Hillsmith held her first art show in New York at the Norlyst Gallery, owned by Jimmy Ernst, in 1943. She also displayed her work in three shows at the Art of This Century Gallery in Manhattan, which was owned by Peggy Guggenheim. In 1953, she exhibited Interior in Tan in the show Nine Women Painters at Bennington College. She also exhibited at a series of shows at the Peridot Gallery and the Charles Egan Gallery during the 1950s and 1960s.

Hillsmith began working at Atelier 17, which was an intaglio printmaking workshop owned by Stanley William Hayter, in 1946. She worked at Aterlier alongside noted artists such as Yves Tanguy, Miró and Jacques Lipchitz. Hillsmith also taught briefly at Black Mountain College, located in Asheville, North Carolina.

Hillmsith's style of Cubism combined traditional Cubist motifs with what she called "an early American feeling." She was influenced by such painters as Picasso, Gris and Miró, according to The New York Times. Her most famous painting was the Molasses Jug, an oil painting completed in 1949.

Fannie Hillsmith actively painted Cubist art for nearly sixty years. She had been represented by an art gallery in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood since 1990. She continued painting every day until January 2007.

Hillsmith died in her sleep at her home in Jaffrey, New Hampshire on July 27, 2007.