Deborah Remington (1930-2010) was an influential American abstract painter known for her distinctive hard-edge painting style. She showed an early interest in art, taking classes at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art as a teenager.
Remington received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1955, where she studied under Elmer Bischoff and Clyfford Still. During her time in San Francisco, she became affiliated with the Bay Area’s Beat scene and was the only female founder of the legendary Six Gallery in 1954, a group of six painters and poets. After graduation, Remington spent two years traveling and living in Japan, Southeast Asia, and India, where she studied calligraphy, supporting herself with odd jobs including as a translator, cook, and even as an actor in B-grade movies. After returning to the United States, she began exhibiting her work at the Dilexi Gallery in San Francisco.
In 1965, Remington moved to New York City, marking a significant shift in her career. She was part of the American Express Pavilion at the New York’s World Fair. Considering her work to that point in time she wrote,
“I am concerned with expressing an intense and personal vision through an imagery which is particularly my own. While I do not completely understand the sources of this imagery, my work contains elements, which by simultaneously attracting and repelling one another, create a tense balance which has emotional and spiritual meaning for me.”
Remington’s first solo exhibition in New York was held at the Bykert Gallery in 1966, followed by four more solo shows between 1967 and 1974.
Her most notable works are characterized by hard-edge painting abstraction. The paintings from the mid-1960s through the 1970s are considered some of her best, featuring complex shapes that seem to hover apart from the dark backgrounds, creating a sense of depth and mystery. The shapes have been referred to as mirrors, frames, and windows.
Remington’s career was marked by numerous achievements and recognitions. In 1983, she had a twenty-year retrospective exhibition that opened at the Newport Harbor Museum in California (now the Orange County Museum of Art). She received a Tamarind Fellowship in 1973, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984, and was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1999. Her work has been collected by prestigious institutions worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Whitney Museum of America Art in New York.
Deborah Remington passed away in 2010, leaving behind a significant legacy in the world of abstract art. Her unique vision and technical skill continue to influence contemporary artists, and her work remains relevant in discussions of mid-20th century American abstraction.