Discipline: Visual Art – painting

Edith Hillinger

Discipline: Visual Art – painting
Region: CALIFORNIA
MacDowell Fellowships: 1976
Edith Hillinger is a California artist who primarily creates watercolor paintings and mixed media collages. She was born in 1933 in Berlin, Germany. In 1937, her family fled to Turkey, where they lived in Istanbul and Ankara. In 1948, the family moved to New York where Hillinger eventually began her formal art education at the Cooper Union. She now lives and works in Berkeley, California. Though Hillinger draws inspiration from botanical and natural scenes, her career has seen her work tend more toward abstraction. Her work also takes inspiration from her formative experiences in different countries, implying "whole cultural histories through expression that is utterly personal." Her collage work has been noted to recall Picasso's graphic work, as well as the paintings of Paul Klee. This work can be seen as a synthesis of the influences of her youth, the adorned surfaces of Turkey and the minimal forms of the Bauhaus. Hillinger has been documented as a founding member of the second wave women's movement, included in a directory of influential members who made notable changes to customs or laws in the U.S. She continues this work today toward the inclusion of female artists in the art historical canon. Hillinger founded the Bay Area Women Artists' Legacy Project to highlight women's contributions to Bay Area art.

Studios

Alexander

Edith Hillinger worked in the Alexander studio.

Originally designed to be a visual art gallery, this facility was built in memory of the late John White Alexander (1856-1915) and funded by Elizabeth Alexander and their son James. John White Alexander was highly regarded as a portrait painter and, in the early part of the 20th century, served…

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