COURTESY MOMA
The Upper East Side’s Van Doren Waxter Gallery now represents the Hedda Sterne Foundation, and will display a selection of Sterne’s works from April 2 to May 1.
Sterne, who died in 2011 at the age of 100, was the only female be included in the famous 1951 Life group photograph of the American Abstract Expressionists, “The Irascibles,” and though she is frequently associated with the group, she resisted that classification during her life.
Born in 1910 in Bucharest, Sterne exhibited at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery and, in 1943, the Wakefield Gallery, in a solo show organized by Betty Parsons. Parsons became her dealer and showed Sterne for more than two decades.
Until fairly recently, Sterne’s work was not especially well known. In 1993, she was the subject of a painting by David Diao that read and is titled, “What Ever Happened to Hedda Sterne?”