John McCracken, American sculptor died he was , 76.

John Harvey McCracken  was a contemporary artist who lived and worked in Santa Fe, New Mexico and New York died he was , 76.

(December 9, 1934 – April 8, 2011)

Education/teaching

After graduating from high school, McCracken served in the Navy for four years before enrolling in the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, earning a B.F.A. in 1962 and completing most of the work for an M.F.A. During these years he studied with Gordon Onslow Ford and Tony DeLap.
Taught
1965-66 University of California, Irvine
1966-68 University of California, Los Angeles
1968-69 School of Visual Arts, New York
1971-72 Hunter College, New York
1972-73 University of Nevada, Reno
1973-75 University of Nevada, Las Vegas
1975-76 University of California, Irvine
1975-85 College of Creative Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

Work

John McCracken developed his earliest sculptural work while studying painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts between 1957 to 1965. While experimenting with increasingly three-dimensional canvases, the artist began to produce objects made with industrial techniques and materials, including plywood, sprayed lacquer, and pigmented resin, creating the highly-reflective, smooth surfaces that has gained him international recognition. He applied similar techniques which are used in surfboard construction - pervasive in his Southern California environment - to his artistic production. McCracken was part of the Light and Space movement which includes James Turrell, Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin and others. In interviews, however, he usually cited his greatest influences as the color fields of the Abstract Expressionist Barnett Newman and Minimalists like Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and Carl Andre.^[2]
Early objects created by John McCracken were derived from company logos such as the Chevron corporation logo. His sculptures deal with the interrelationships existing between the material world and design.^[3]
In 1966, McCracken generated his signature sculptural form: the plank, a narrow, monochromatic, rectangular board format that leans at an angle against the wall (the site of painting) while simultaneously entering into the three-dimensional realm and physical space of the viewer. He conceived the plank idea in a period when artists across the stylistic spectrum were combining aspects of painting and sculpture in their work and many were experimenting with sleek, impersonal surfaces. As the artist noted, "I see the plank as existing between two worlds, the floor representing the physical world of standing objects, trees, cars, buildings, [and] human bodies, ... and the wall representing the world of the imagination, illusionist painting space, [and] human mental space." ^[4] The sculptures consist of plywood forms coated with fiberglass and layers of polyester resin. While the polished resin surface recalls the aesthetic of 1960s southern California surfboard and Kustom Kar cultures, the title was drawn from advertising slogans in fashion magazines.^[5] In addition to the planks, the artist also creates wall pieces and free-standing sculptures in varying geometrical shapes and sizes, ranging from smaller forms on pedestals to large-scale, outdoor structures in the shape of pyramids, ziggurats, tetrahedrons and occasionally crystals. He worked in highly polished stainless steel and bronze and occasionally made work that in effect sliced the planks into thin, repeating elements that leaned against the wall in rows.
In McCracken's work, color was also used as "material." Bold solid colors with their highly polished finish reflect the unique California light or mirror the observer in a way that takes the work into another dimension. His palette included bubble-gum pink, lemon yellow, deep sapphire and ebony, usually applied as a monochrome. Sometimes an application of multiple colors marbleizes or runs down the sculpture's surface, like a molten lava flow.^[6] McCracken typically makes each resin or lacquer work by hand rather than using industrial fabrication. Each is hand-made by McCracken himself, who carefully paints them.^[7] The monochrome surfaces are sanded and polished many times to such a degree of reflectiveness that they seem translucent. He also made objects of softly stained wood or, in recent years, highly polished bronze and reflective stainless steel.^[8] In 2010, for example, he created various sculptures that are polished to produce such a high degree of reflectivity that they simultaneously activate their surroundings and seem entirely camouflaged.
In 1971-72 he made a rarely seen series of paintings based on Hindu and Buddhist mandalas, first shown at Castello di Rivoli in 2011. "John McCracken: Sketchbook" was published in 2008 by Santa Fe-based Radius Books.
During the 1970s and early '80s, a period when he devoted his time to teaching at the University of Nevada in Reno and Las Vegas and at the University of California, Santa Barbara, McCracken received relatively little critical attention. A 1985 move to Los Angeles with his wife, artist Gail Barringer, revived his career in terms of newly conceived bodies of work, gallery and museum exhibitions, and recognition by a younger generation of artists, dealers, and curators.^[9] McCracken had lived in Santa Fe since 1994.

Exhibitions

McCracken was included in every important exhibition of Minimalist sculpture in both the United States and Europe, starting with “Primary Structures” at the Jewish Museum in 1966 and with "American Sculpture of the Sixties" at the Los Angeles County Museum (1967).^[10]
A major museum retrospective of McCracken's work is hosted by the Castello di Rivoli - Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin in the spring of 2011. Other recent solo exhibitions include David Zwirner, New York (1997, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010), Inverleith House at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (2009), Zwirner & Wirth, New York (2000 and 2005), Hauser & Wirth, Zurich (1999 and 2005), and the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), Ghent (2004).
Over the past decade, McCracken's work has been shown internationally in group shows at prominent art galleries and museums including National Museum of Art, Architecture, and Design, Oslo (2010), Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany (2009), P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York (2009), Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California (2009), Hamburger Bahnhof Museum fur Gegenwart - Berlin (2005 and 2009), Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice (2009), Musee d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France (2007 and 2008), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2008), Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2004 and 2008), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2008), documenta 12, Kassel, Germany (2007), Krannert Art Museum, Urbana, Illinois (2007), Oakland Museum of Art, Oakland, California (2007), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2004 and 2007), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2007), Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California (2006), ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany (2005 and 2006), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2006), Las Vegas Art Museum, Nevada (2006), Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York (2005), Musee Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland (2005), Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, England (2005), Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Germany (2005), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2005), Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada (2004), Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Texas (2004), Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida (2003), Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut (2001), and Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Ohio (2000). He was honored at Documenta 12 in Kassel in 2007, in which a small survey of his art was woven throughout the larger show.

At Auction

McCracken had his first exhibition at the Nicholas Wilder Gallery in Los Angeles in 1965 and his first in New York at the Robert Elkon Gallery in 1966. He then trailed off, with his next show at Sonnabend Gallery in 1992 and then a 1997 outing at the gallery of David Zwirner, who still represents the artist.
His top-ten prices at auction all exceed $200,000, including his high auction mark for an eight-foot-tall Black Plank from 1972, in polyester resin, fiberglass, and plywood, that sold for £180,000 ($358,637) at Phillips de Pury & Company London in June 2007. More recently, Flash (2002), a fire-engine-red plank piece in the same media, sold for $290,500 at Christie's New York in November 2010 against an estimate of $120–180,000.^[11]

Works in permanent collections

United States

California

• No. 25, 1964, University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley
• Nine Planks V, 1974, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach
• Blue Column, 1967, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Plank, 1976, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Don't Tell Me When to Stop, 1967, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Untitled, 1982, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• Mykonos, 1965, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach
• Plank I, 1974, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach
• Pyramid, , Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach
• Red Cube, 1971, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach
• Untitled, , Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach
• Blue Post and Lintel I, 1965, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena
• Le Baron, , Oakland Museum, Oakland
• Love in Italian, 1967, Oakland Museum, Oakland
• Nine Planks, IV, 1974, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla
• Painting, 1974, San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla
• Right Down, 1967, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
• University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara

Hawaii

• Blue Post and Lintel, 1970, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii
• Chimu, 1965, Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii
• Yellow Pyramid, 1965, Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu, Hawaii

Louisiana

• Plank, 1980, K & B Corporation, New Orleans, Louisiana

New York

• The Absolutely Naked Fragrance, 1967, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
• Naxos, 1965, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York
• Untitled (Pink Box), 1970, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York
• Untitled, 1969, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York
• Violet Block in Two Parts, 1966, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York

Rhode Island

• Untitled (Grey Plank), 1978, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island

Washington, D.C.

• 23, 1964, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• Untitled slab painting, resin and fiberglass sculpture, 1981, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Wisconsin

• You Won't Know Which One Until You've Been to All of Them, 1967, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Illinois

• "Red Plank", 1969. The Art Institute of Chicago

 International

Canada Ontario

• Black Box #2, 1971, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

France

• Wing (Aile), 1999, French National Art Collection (FNAC)

Bibliography

• Heroic Stance: The Sculpture of John McCracken. Newport Harbor Art Museum. ISBN 0-917493-09-5.
• Research Information System - John McCracken
• Busch, Julia M., A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960s (The Art Alliance Press: Philadelphia; Associated University Presses: London, 1974) ISBN 0-87982-007-1

 

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John Pugsley, American libertarian speaker and writer died he was , 77.

 John Allen Pugsley  was an American voluntaryist libertarian political and economics commentator, lecturer, and author died he was , 77.

(January 5, 1934 – April 8, 2011)

Biography

Pugsley was born in Minnesota. He attended El Camino Junior College, the University of Florida, and graduated from UCLA. After serving in the U.S. Army, he spent a year cruising on a 38-foot sailboat, and another year living in Mexico with his wife and children. He then returned to the U.S. and spent the next two decades as a businessman.^[2]
In the late 1960s Pugsley entered the investment business, where he founded a publishing company (The Common Sense Press) and wrote his first book, Common Sense Economics. It sold over 150,000 hardcover copies.^[3] His second book, The Alpha Strategy (1980), was on the New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks in 1981.^[4] Pugsley distributed a PDF format edition of the book, free of charge.^[5] Even after 28 years in circulation (as of 2008), The Alpha Strategy is considered a standard reference on stocking up on food and household goods as a hedge against inflation. This has made the book popular with survivalists.^[6][7]
In Common Sense Economics he cites as influences, Murray Rothbard, Henry Hazlitt, and Ludwig von Mises^[8], and subsequent works also cite the influence of Andrew J. Galambos. In 1995 he authored an open letter to Harry Browne advising him against running for president; Pugsley's argument against Browne running was based on the principles of voluntaryism and non-voting.^[9]
In 1975 he began a newsletter on economic and political events, Common Sense Viewpoint (1974), which had 30,000 subscribers at its peak.^[10] In 1988 he began publication of John Pugsley's Journal, an investment-economic newsletter covering political, economic, and investment topics.^[11]
In the mid-1970s, after reading E.O. Wilson's book, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Pugsley began to study evolutionary biology. As his study continued over the subsequent 25 years, Pugsley founded The Bio-Rational Institute.^[11] Currently, the Institute's website is not regularly updated.
Pugsley was one of the founding members of The Eris Society.^[12] In 1997, Pugsley helped to found The Sovereign Society, an international organization dedicated to maintaining the privacy and protecting the wealth and liberty of its members. The society is primarily geared toward expatriate relocation and offshore banking and trusts.^[13] Pugsley was the Chairman of the society at the time of his death ^[13] and wrote a monthly column for their e-newsletter The Sovereign Individual. In 2006, Pugsley founded "The Stealth Investor", a weekly e-letter stock advisory letter.^[14] He also wrote for The Daily Reckoning e-newsletter.^[15]
Pugsley lived in Carlsbad, California,^[11] and just prior to moving to Carlsbad he lived aboard the 50-foot sloop named Eris Island in the Abacos, Bahamas, along with Kiana Delamare. Delamare has written for EscapeArtist.com ^[16] and the International Living e-newsletter.^[17]
Pugsley had a blog.^[18]
Pugsley died at 77 on April 8, 2011.^[19]

Books authored

• Common Sense Economics (1974)
• The Metals Investors Handbook (1977)
• The Alpha Strategy: The Ultimate Plan of Financial Self-Defense for the Small Investor (1980)
• The Bank Book (1981)
• The Copper Play (1980)
• The Interest Rate Strategy (1982)

 

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Donald Shanks, Australian operatic bass-baritone, died from a heart attack he was , 70

Donald Robert Shanks AO OBE  was an Australian bass-baritone singer who sang over 65 principal roles with Opera Australia and other companies both in Australia and overseas died from a heart attack he was , 70.
Donald Shanks was born in Brisbane, Queensland and started singing in church choirs. His first experience of a staged work was Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, the opera with which he also chose to end his career in 2004.

(5 July 1940 – 8 April 2011)

He joined the Elizabethan Theatre Trust Opera Company (as Opera Australia was then known) in 1964, aged 23. Over the years, he built a reputation as one of the most versatile figures in Australian opera, performing in all the major comic roles, from the title role in Don Pasquale and Bartolo in The Marriage of Figaro, to The Italian Girl in Algiers to bel canto roles such as Lucia di Lammermoor and Norma, to the key dramatic roles, particularly in Wagner heavyweights such as Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde. He sang in Lucia di Lammermoor, Il trovatore and Norma with Dame Joan Sutherland, La bohème with Luciano Pavarotti, and Banquo in Macbeth with Sherrill Milnes.
Other roles he became associated with were Zaccharia in Nabucco, Rocco in Fidelio, Osmin in The Abduction from the Seraglio, Pimen in Boris Godunov, Timur in Turandot, Ramphis in Aida, Pistol in Falstaff, Kekal in The Bartered Bride, Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier, Nourabad in The Pearl Fishers, the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, and a major role in Leoš Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen.
He also performed regularly with the Lyric Opera of Queensland and the Victorian State Opera, as well as opera companies overseas including the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, the Paris Opera 1976–77 and the Canadian Opera 1983–86.

Honours

Donald Shanks was made an Officer (OBE) of the Order of the British Empire in the 1977 New Years Day Honours,^[1] and an Officer (AO) of the Order of Australia in the 1987 Australia Day Honours.^[2]
He died on 8 April 2011, aged 70, of a heart attack.^[3]

 

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Hedda Sterne, Romanian-born American painter and printmaker died she was , 100

Hedda Sterne (born Hedwig Lindenberg) was an artist best remembered as the only woman in a group of Abstract Expressionists known as "The Irascibles" which consisted of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and others  died she was , 100. Sterne was, in fact, the only woman photographed with the group by Nina Leen for Life magazine in 1950. In her artistic endavors she created a body of work known for exhibiting a stubborn independence from styles and trends, including Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, with which she is often associated.

(August 4, 1910 – April 8, 2011)

Sterne has been almost completely overlooked in art historical narratives of the post-war American art scene. At the time of her death, possibly the last surviving artist of the first-generation of the New York School, Hedda Sterne viewed her widely varied works more as in flux than as definitive statements.^[2] In 1944 she married Saul Steinberg the Romanian-born American cartoonist and illustrator, best known for his work for The New Yorker.
During the late 1940s she became a member of The Irascible Eighteen, a group of abstract painters who protested the Metropolitan Museum of Art's policy towards American painting of the 1940s and who posed for a famous picture in 1950; members of the group besides Sterne included: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jimmy Ernst, Jackson Pollock, James Brooks, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Theodoros Stamos, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko.^[3]
Her works are in the collections of museums including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, also in Washington D.C. She turned 100 in August 2010.^[4]

Biography

Sterne was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1910 as Hedwig Lindenberg. Born to Simon Lindenberg, a high school language teacher,and Eugenie (Wexler) Lindenberg. She was the second child with her only sibling, Edouard, who later became a prominent conductor in Paris.^[5] Sterne was raised with artistic values from a young age, most notably, her tie to Surrealism, which stemmed from a family friend, Victor Brauner.^[5] Sterne was homeschooled until age 11. Upon her high school graduation in 1927,at age 17, she attended art classes in Vienna, then had a short attendance at the University of Bucharest studying philosophy and art history before she dropped out to pursue artistic training independently.^[6] She spent time traveling, especially to Paris developing her technical skills as both a painter and sculptor. Hedda Sterne married a childhood friend Frederick Sterne in 1932 when she was 22. In 1941 she escaped a certain death from Nazi encroachment during WWII when she fled to New York to be with Frederick. In 1944 she remarried Saul Steinberg and became a U.S. citizen. It is not mentioned if she ever had children. She was involved in many shows and exhibits in New York and practiced her art up until macular dgenration set in and she could no longer paint, but continued to draw. Then when she was 94 Sterne had a stroke that affected her vision and movement and thereafter was unable to make art at all.^[7]

Chronology

• 1910 - Born in Bucharest, Romania.
• 1919 - Her father Simon dies. Her mother remarries Leonida Cioara, the partner in their family business.
• 1927 - Finishes high school.
• 1928 - Enters University of Bucharest to study Art History and Philosophy but finds curriculum limiting and leaves after a year to do independent study.
• 1932 - Marries childhood friend Frederick Stern. They divorced in 1944.
• 1939 - WWII begins.
• 1941 - Barely escaping a massacre of Jews in her apartment building Hedda flees to New York. Meets Peggy Guggenheim through which she meets several artists.
• 1944 - Marries Saul Steinberg. Sterne Becomes U.S. citizen.
• 1950 - Named one of country's best artists under age of 36 in the March 20 issue of Life. Signs a letter to President of The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 20 to protest aesthetically conservative group-exhibition juries.^[5] All signers are dubbed "The Irascibles" in an articles about the letter wherein the famous Nina Leen photograph of the artists is published for the first time.
• 1960 - Sterne and Steinberg separate but remain close friends. Begins to disengage socially with the art world and leads an increasingly private life.
• 1992 - In November, meets the art dealer Philippe Briet, the beginning of a sustainable friendship leading to several projects, which will be interrupted by his prematured death in February 1997. In October 1994, he introduces writer Michel Butor to Hedda Sterne, being at the origin of their collaboration for the book he would publish in September 1995, "La Révolution dans l'Arboretum".
• 1997 - Macular degeneration causes Sterne to stop painting, however she continues drawing.
• 1999 - Her second husband Saul Steinberg dies.
• 2004 - Suffers stroke. Makes a remarkable recovery but her eyesight fails causing her to stop practicing her art.
• 2006 - "Uninterrupted Flux: Hedda Sterne; A Retrospective" is written.

^[5]

• 2010 - Sterne reaches her 100th birthday in August.
• 2011 - Dies in New York at age 100.

Quotes

• "I have a feeling that in art the need to understand and the need to communicate are one."
• "Nobody tried to influence me, I just worked."
• "I always thought that art is not quote self-expression but communication."
• "It's malentendu to consider me Abstract Expressionist. I was invited to participate in many things, but I never considered myself part of that group, or any group, and it shows in my work."
• "I cannot stand that every time people talk about you they immediately want to place you in a box--influenced by so and so...But you do not derive directly from anyone."
• "My idea being that for the sublime and the beautiful and the interesting, you do not have to look far away. You have to know how to see."
• "I always painted ideas, I have to say. It was always some set of ideas that get me going."

^[8]

The Irascibles

Sterne the only woman in a group of rogue artists who were dubbed "The Irascibles". The term was coined to represent the group consisting of 18 prominent artists of their day, including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. These artists were also thought to be a part of the New York School as well as Sterne (although she preferred not to be aligned with any artistic group). "The Irascibles" are the artists who signed a letter protesting conservative group-exhibition juries to the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They were referred to as The Irascibles in an article featured in an issue of Life where the infamous Nina Leen photograph was published of all members of "The Irascibles".^[5]

Legacy

From the very beginning of her outstanding but unknown career, Sterne maintained an individual profile in the face of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman, all of whom she knew personally. Her independence reflected an immense artistic and personal integrity. The astonishing variety of Sterne's work, spanning from her initial appropriation of surrealist techniques, to her investigation of conceptual painting, and her unprecedented installations in the 1960s, exemplify her adventurous spirit. Yet, the heterogeneity of her styles, and her complete disinterest in the commercially driven art world, have contributed to her exclusion from the canon. When the heroic male narratives of modernism begin to fade, we may, eventually, be ready to recognize this amazingly idiosyncratic body of work. Sterne's art is, indeed, a manifesto in favor of the untamable forces of the mind and the continually changing flux of life.
^[9]

Career

Sterne's career did not bloom until she came to New York, even though she had had a few exhibitions in Romania. She showed her work for the first time in a group show, the 11th Exposition du Salon des Surindépendants, in Paris in 1938. Sterne was included in group and independent art shows throughout her entire career.^[10]

 Artistic Style

"Hedda Sterne views her widely varied works more as "in flux" than as definitive statements. She has maintained a stubborn independence from styles and trends, including Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism".^[11] Hedda never liked to define her art or herself into any group socially or artistically. She never followed a boundary of a certain style. Sterne was a self taught, uninfluenced artist who just worked and made her art as she pleased and how she pleased without having a single concern to try to define her art into any category. "Although she never developed a signature style, Ms. Sterne's explorations have produced a small universe of evocative images".^[12]

Artworks

• New York VIII, 1954 - The Museum of Modern Art
• Violin Lesson, 1944 - Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
• Machine 5, 1950 - Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Tondo #22, 1953 - Illinois State Museum
• Third Avenue El, 1952-53 - The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• New York No. 1, 1954 - Toledo Museum of Art
• New York, N.Y., 1955 - Whitney Museum of American Art
• New York, 1956 - The Art Institute of Chicago
• Barnett Newman, 1952 - The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College
• Diary, 1976

^[13]

Awards

• 1957 - Second Prize, Art Institute of Chicago Annual
• 1963 - Fulbright Fellowship, Studied in Venice
• 1967 - First Prize, Art Institute of Newport Annual
• 1971 - American Academy of Arts & Letters, "Childe Hassam Purchase Award"
• 1984 - American Academy of Arts & Letters, "Hassam and Speicher Purchase Fund Award"

^[13]

One Woman Shows

• 1945 - Wakefield Gallery, N.Y.
• 1945 - Mortimer Brandt Gallery, N.Y.
• 1947 - Betty Parsons Gallery, '48, '50 '53, '54, '57, '58, '61, '63, '66, '68, '70, '74, '75, '78
• 1953 - Galleria dell'Obelisco, Rome, '61
• 1953 - Museo de Arte, SaoPaulo, Brazil
• 1955 - Arts Club of Chicago
• 1956 - Vassar College
• 1956 - Saidenberg Gallery
• 1968 - Rizzoli Gallery
• 1971 - Sneed Gallery
• 1972 - Clinton, N.J.
• 1973 - Upstairs Gallery, East Hampton
• 1973 - "Hedda Sterne: Recent Painting", Rush Rhees Gallery, University of Rochester, NY (November 26-December 15).
• 1975 - "Hedda Sterne: Portraits", Lee Ault & Company, New York (October 15-November 8).
• 1977 - "Hedda Sterne: Retrospective Exhibition", Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey (April 24-June 26).
• 1982 - "Hedda Sterne: A Painting in Life", CDS Gallery, New York (March 17-April 12).
• 1985 - "Hedda Sterne: Forty Years", retrospective, Queens Museum of Art, New York (February 2-April 14).
• 1993 - "Hedda Sterne", Philippe Briet Gallery, New York (January 23-February 27).
• 1995 - "Hedda Sterne, New Paintings", CDS Gallery, New York (February 18-March 31).
• 1998 - "Hedda Sterne: Dessins [1939-1998]," Bibliothèque Municipale, Caen (April 1–30).

^[13]

Group Shows (Abbreviated list)

• 1943 - Art of This Century gallery, N.Y., "Exhibition of 31 Women"
• 1949 - Whitney Museum Annual, '59, '67
• 1951 - Los Angeles County Museum
• 1951 - Third Tokyo International Art Exhibition
• 1954 - Art Institute of Chicago Annual, '55, '57, '60, '61
• 1955 - Museum of modern Art
• 1955 - Corcoran Gallery Annual, Washington, D.C., '56, '58, '63
• 1955 - Whitney Museum, "New Decade Show"
• 1955 - Carnegie International, '58, '61, '62, '64
• 1955 - Rhode Island School of Design, '56
• 1956 - Venice Biennial
• 1956 - Smithsonian Institution
• 1956 - Art Institute of Chicago, "American Artists Paint the City"
• 1957 - Minnesota Institute of Art, "American Painting"
• 1958-59 - American Federation of Arts, University of Iowa, "Contemporary American Paintings"
• 1960 - Mexico City Biennial
• 1961 - Art Institute of Chicago, "Painting & Sculpture"
• 1962 - Molton Gallery, London "Four American Painters"
• 1964 - Cincinnati Art Museum
• 1964 - Das Kunstwerk, "The Work of Art"
• 1966 - Heron Museum of Art
• 1969 - Phillips Collection, Westmoreland Museum
• 1971 - Finch College, "Artists at Work"
• 1972 - Guild Hall, East Hampton, "Then & Now"
• 1971 - Minnesota Museum of Art, "Drawings USA/71"
• 1971 - Heckscher Museum, Huntington, N.Y.^[13]
• 1983, May 25-June 18, Betty Parsons Gallery. Mino Argento, Jack Youngerman, David Budd, Calvert Coggeshall, Cleve Gray, Lee Hall, Minoru Kawabata, Richard Pousette-Dart, Leon Polk Smith, Hedda Sterne, Ed Zutrau and Sari Dienes (among others).^[14]
• 1994 - Galerie de l'École des Beaux-Arts, Lorient, "Le Temps d'un Dessin", curated by Philippe Briet, drawings by 86 artists living in the United States (March 16-April 6).

Collections

• Metropolitan Museum
• Museum of Modern Art
• Whitney Museum
• Art Institute of Chicago
• Virginia Museum, Richmond
• University of Illinois, Urbana
• Rockefeller Institute
• Detroit Institute of Art
• Joseph H. Hirshhorn Collection
• Albrecht Gallery, St. Joseph, Mo.
• Chase Manhattan Bank
• U.S. Dept. of State
• Albright-Know Art Gallery, Buffalo
• University of Nebraska Art Gallery
• Carnegie Institute
• Inland Steel Co., Chicago
• Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
• Toledo Museum of Art
• Childe Hassam Purchase
• Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul

 

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Elena Zuasti, Uruguayan stage actress and comedienne, died from heart failure she was , 75.

Elena Zuasti  was a Uruguayan stage actress and comedienne died from heart failure she was , 75..

(May 18, 1935 – April 8, 2011)

Biography

Zuasti was born in Montevideo in 1935. She graduated twenty years later from the Dramatic Art School and managed to enter the National Comedy, where she remained until 1976. She also taught stage performance for many decades, combining the teaching with her work as an actress. She worked, among other places, at the Faustan Italy Theater Company (in Spanish, Compañía Teatral Italia Fausta) and at Comediantes.com, which belongs to the Uruguay-United States Alliance.^[3]
She was one of the first actresses to perform on Uruguayan radio programs, introducing a practice which was unpopular in the country. She also adapted many European plays, some of which included Irish playwright Samuel Beckett's plays.^[3]
Zuasti was also a television and film actress. Some of her featured projects include El año del dragón, A cara o cruz and La espera (2002).^[3]
She died on April 8, 2011, probably following a heart attack^[4] while performing her character Martiniana on stage for the play Barranca abajo «Downhill».^[3][5]

 Filmography

• El ojo en la nuca (2001)
• La espera (2002)
• Uruguayos campeones (2004)

 

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Bruce Cowan, Australian politician, member of the House of Representatives (1980–1993) died he was , 85.

David Bruce Cowan, AM was an Australian politician and Minister of the Crown in the cabinets of Tom Lewis and Sir Eric Willis died he was , 85.. He was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly for 14 years from 6 November 1965 until his resignation on 29 August 1980 and then for 13 years in the Australian House of Representatives for Lyne for the Country Party of Australia and its successors, the National Country and then National Parties.

(15 January 1926 – 7 April 2011) 

Early life

Bruce Cowan was born in January 1926 in Taree, New South Wales, the son of a farmer, David Cowan, and Bessie Kent. He was educated at Oxley Island Public School and Taree High School and thereafter worked as a farmer, a real estate agent, and stock and station agent.^[1]
He became a prominent member of the community, becoming the country real estate agents representative on the New South Wales Council of Auctioneers, the President of Oxley Island Primary Producers Union Branch, Secretary of Oxley Island Drainage Union and as a Member of the Taree Rotary Club for 37 years.^[1] He married Laura Bidner on 5 June 1954 and had two daughters, one of whom, Rosemary, married the future Leader of the New South Wales Liberal Party and Premier of New South Wales, Barry O'Farrell.^[2]

Political career

Cowan's interest in politics began when he joined the Country Party of Australia, becoming a member of the central executive in 1952, 1953 and 1958.^[1] He ran for the local government elections and became an Alderman on Taree Municipal Council from 1957 to 1965, later rising to become Deputy Mayor from 1959 to 1965.^[3]
In 1965, he contested the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Oxley at a November by-election caused by the death of the sitting member, Les Jordan. He went on to win the seat on preferences with 59.75% of the vote.^[4] He went on to retain his seat a further 5 times, each time with a significant majority, until his resignation.^[5] For most of his time in Parliament he remained on the backbenches until Premier Askin retired and Tom Lewis became Premier, who appointed him as Minister for Agriculture and Minister for Water Resources on 17 December 1975. He held these portfolios until, Lewis' successor, Sir Eric Willis, lost the election on 14 May 1976.^[1]
In opposition he was made the Shadow Minister for Conservation and Shadow Minister for Water Resources from 28 May 1976 to 2 November 1978, when under the new leader, John Mason, he was apponted the Shadow Minister for Local Government and Shadow Minister for Roads. Held this portfolio until he resigned and later also resigned his seat on 29 August 1980.^[6]
In 1980, Cowan won the National Country Party preselection for the Australian House of Representatives seat of Lyne when Philip Lucock retired from politics. Cowan faced the Labor candidate and Local Councillor Leslie Brown and the Liberal Party's Milton Morris who was the Member for Maitland in the NSW Legislative Assembly. Although Brown won more primary votes, preferences from Morris were more than enough to ensure that Cowan was elected. Cowan held the seat comfortably until retiring at the 1993 election.^[2]
On 26 January 1998, Cowan was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for service to Parliament and the community.^[7] On 1 January 2001, he was also awarded the Centenary Medal for service to society through parliament.^[8]
Cowan died on 7 April 2011, a week after O'Farrell was elected Premier of New South Wales.^[9]

 

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