Janet Abramowicz (1930-2020) was a visual artist and writer. She is a graduate of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, where she was a student of Giorgio Morandi and also served as his teaching assistant. She wrote extensively on the painter, beginning in 1968 with an essay for the Vancouver Art Gallery and most recently for the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2008). Her book Giorgio Morandi: The Art of Silence, published by Yale University Press, is the most complete biography of the painter.
As a practicing painter and printmaker, she lived and worked in Kyoto, Tokyo, and Rome. While in Japan she traveled throughout the country studying papermaking and wrote art reviews for the Asahi Evening News. Her first solo exhibition was held at the Nantenshi Gallery in Tokyo. From 1971 to 1991 she was senior lecturer in fine arts at Harvard University, where she established a program in the history of materials and studio techniques for the department of fine arts. In 1990 she was elected a member ad honorem of the Accademia Clementina in Italy for her contribution to Italian studies.
She received fellowships and grants from many institutions, and she was a visiting artist during several summers at the American Academy in Rome and an artist-in-residence at both MacDowell as well as the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica in Rome. Her paintings and etchings, which use multiple plates and three-dimensional collages, are in the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library, New York City; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge; Boston Public Library; Museo d’Arte Moderna, La Spezia; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Bologna; Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Rome; and many more. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held internationally, and retrospective at Palazzo Poli in Rome was held in 2013.
