Meeting Place: "Hedda Sterne’s Artistic Metamorphosis"
Meeting Place: "Hedda Sterne’s Artistic Metamorphosis"

Hedda Sterne’s Artistic Metamorphosis

with Gražina Subelytė

An active member of the New York School, Hedda Sterne created a vast body of work that traversed some of the key movements of the twentieth century, bridging European Modernism, in particular Surrealism, and American Abstract Expressionism. However, Sterne’s work stands as a testament to her independence of thought, moving freely between figuration and abstraction throughout her career. Sterne’s work was recommended to Peggy Guggenheim by Jean Arp, and was later included in five exhibitions at Guggenheim’s museum-gallery Art of This Century in New York. While Sterne is perhaps most recognizable as the only woman in the famous 1951 photograph of the so-called Irascibles, this talk will delve into her impressive body of work, which deserves wider recognition.

Gražina Subelytė is Associate Curator at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, where she has curated Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity (2022), 1948: The Biennale of Peggy Guggenheim (2018–2019), and Rita Kernn-Larsen: Surrealist Paintings (2017), and co-curated From Gesture to Form: Postwar European and American Art from the Schulhof Collection (2019) and Peggy Guggenheim: The Last Dogaressa (2019–2020). She has also published the catalogue Hannelore B. and Rudolph B. Schulhof Collection (2016), as well as numerous articles and essays on modern art, particularly on Surrealism and its relationship with magic and the occult. She completed her PhD at The Courtauld Institute of Art in 2021.

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