Artist Biography & Facts

Deborah Williams Remington

The following information is from the artist, February 2006:

ONE WOMAN SHOWS:  (partial  listing)

1962      Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco
1964      San Francisco Museum of Art
1965      Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco
1967      Bykert Gallery, New York
1968      Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris
1969      Bykert Gallery, New York
1971      Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris
              Obelisk Gallery, Boston
1973      Pyramid Gallery, Washington, D.C.
              Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris
1974      Bykert Gallery, New York
              Brooke Alexander, Inc., New York     
              Michael Berger Gallery, Pittsburgh, Pa.
1976      Pyramid Gallery, Washington, D.C.
              Zolla-Lieberman Gallery, Chicago
1977      Hamilton Gallery, New York
              Portland Center for the Visual Arts, Portland, Oregon
              Museum, University of Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri
1978      Art Gallery, Miami Dade Community College, South Campus, Miami
1979      Michael Berger Gallery, Pittsburgh, Pa.
1980      Bonfoey Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio
1982      Mary Ryan Gallery, New York
1983      Ramon Osuna Gallery, Washington, D.C.
              Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, Ca.
1984      Oakland Museum of Art, Oakland, Ca.
              Adams-Middleton Gallery, Dallas, Texas
              Museum, San Jose State University, San Jose, Ca.
1985      Ianuzzi Gallery, Phoenix, Az.
1987      Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
1988      Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca.
1992      Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris


GROUP SHOWS:  (partial listing)

Whitney Museum Painting Annuals, New York, 1965, 1967, 1972
Drawings from West Coast America, Auckland Museum, New Zealand, 1962
Recent California Painting and Sculpture, La Jolla Museum, Ca., 1965
San Francisco Museum of Art Painting Annuals, Ca., 1956,'60,'61,'63,'64,'65
11 Salon de Galleries Pilotes, Lausanne Museum, Switzerland, 1966
University of Illinois Biennial, Champagne-Urbana, Illinois, 1967
Recent Acquistions Show, Whitney Museum, New York, 1966
Art Vivant 1965-1968, Fondation Maeght, St. Paul de Vence, France, 1968
The Art of Organic Form, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1968
Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, 1968
L'Art Vivant Americain, Fondation Maeght, St. Paul de Vence, France, 1970
Painting and Sculpture Today, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana, 1970
American Painting Today, Virginia Museum, Richmond, Virginia, 1970
Drawings by New York Artists, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, 1971         
     (circulated to other museums, 1972-1973)
A Period of Exploration, Oakland Museum, Oakland, Ca., 1973
Woman's Work American Art, 1974, Museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center, Phila., Pa., 1974
71st American Exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Ill., 1974
Image, Color, and Form:  Recent Paintings by Eleven Americans,
Toledo Museum, Toledo, OH, 1975
Painting Endures, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Mass., 1975
American Artists '76:A Celebration, McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas, 1976
Drawing Now:  10 Artists, SoHo Center for the Visual Arts, New York, 1976
Drawing Today in New York, Exhibition travelled to six university museums in 1976, 1977
Painting and Sculpture in California: the Modern Era, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
S.F., Ca., 1976. National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C., 1977
Three Artists:  Three Viewpoints, Museum of North Texas State University, Denton, TX, 1976
Drawings of the 70's, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, 1977
41st Annual National Mid-Year Show, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, 1977
New in the 70's, Blanton Art Museum, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, 1977
New Dimensions in Drawing, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Conn., 1981
The New Spiritualism, Oscarsson Hood Gallery, New York, 1981.  Exhibition travelled to two
     university museums in 1981, 1982
LIS '81, International Exhibition of Drawings, National Gallery of Modern Art,
Lisbon, Portugal, 1981
La Part Des Femmes Dans L'Art Contemporain, Galerie Municipale, Ville De Vitry
Sur-Seine, France, 1984
The Dilexi Years:  1958-1970, Oakland Museum of Art, Oakland, Ca., 1984
American Art:  American Women, Stamford Museum, Stamford, Ct., 1985-86
Fall Invitational, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Ct., 9/26/87 - 1/3/88
39th, 40th, 41st Annual Purchase Exhibitions, American Academy and Institute of Arts
and Letters, New York, 1987, 1988, 1989.
The Question of Drawing, South Campus Art Gallery, Miami-Dade College,
Miami, FL. 1989(circulated to other museums, 1989-1990)
The 6 Gallery 1954-1957, Natsoulas Noveloso Gallery, Davis, CA., 1990
ler Trieannale des Ameriques, Maubeuge, France. April 24 - June 30, 1993
The Print Club of Cleveland Publication Prints 1924-1994, 75th Anniversary Exhibition,
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio. March 9 - 3une 26, 1994
175th,178th,180th Annual Exhibition, National Academy Museum, New York, N.Y. 2000, 2003, 2005
Reconstructing Abstraction, Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, N.Y.  4/12 - 5/13/2000
Tamarind Institute 40 Year Retrospective Exhibition, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, N.M. 6/9-9/15/2000
The Stamp of Impulse: Abstract Expressionist Prints, Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA,
     2001. Travels to Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, Amon-Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX, & others
Parallels and Intersections: Art/Women/California, 1950-2000. SanJose Museum of Art, San Jose,  
       CA. 6/29/02-10/22/2002
Contemporary Prints from the Collection, National Academy of Design, NY, 7/2 - 9/26/2004
Paths to the Press: Printmaking and American Women Artists, 1910-1960. Mariana Kistler Beach 
        Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS..2005. travels to Mary &
        Leigh Block Museum of Art, Evanston, IL 2005 and other venues in 2006


PUBLIC  COLLECTIONS:   (partial listing)

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Boymans Museum, Rotterdam, Holland
Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois
Centre d'Art et de Culture George Pompidou, Paris
San Francisco Museum of Art, California
Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PA.
Phoenix Museum of Art, Phoenix, AZ.
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI.
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris
Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana
Auckland Museum, New Zealand
Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
Aachenbach Foundation, San Francisco, CA.
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT.
Oakland Museum of Art, Oakland, CA.
Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro,
Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio
Museum of Art, University of California, Berkeley, CA.
Museum of Art, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M.
Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA.
Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Champagne, 1L.
Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA.
Smithsonian  American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN.
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
SamCleveuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, FL.
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE.
New York Public Library, N.Y., N.Y.
Bryn Mawr College Art Gallery, Bryn Mawr, PA.
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Logan, Utah
Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA.
University of Texas-Pan American's Permanent Collection, Charles & Dorothy Clark Collection
National Academy of Design, New York, N.Y.
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA.
Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, La Jolla, CA
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA
Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, OK
Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ

AWARDS:

National Academy of Design, N.Y., Benjamin Altman Award, 178th Annual Exhibition, 2003
Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, 1999
American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Hassam & Speicher Purchase, 1988
Guggenheim Fellowship, 1984
National Endowment Fellowship, 1979
Tamarind Fellowship, Artist-In-Residence, Fall, 1973


Elected to the National Academy, New York, 1999
Interviewed by the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1972 and 2004

Expressionist painter and printmaker Deborah Williams Remington creates hard-edge abstractions that suggest a wide variety of subject matter including Japanese calligraphy, automobile parts, and bones of human beings.  Her work reflects two ongoing influences, which are her several years spent in the Orient studying calligraphy and her immersion in action painting when she was a student in San Francisco.

Remington was born in Haddonfield, New Jersey, where her father was a stockbroker and her mother an intelligent person who had much association with illustrators.  Her father died when she was young, and the family went to California where she attended high school in Pasadena.  She enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute and became part of the Bay Area Figurative movement, the West Coast version of New York's Abstract Expressionism.  Teachers included David Park, Elmer Bischoff, and Clyfford Still, leaders of the Bay Area style.

Becoming part of the Beatnik scene, she ran the Six Gallery with several other artists, and this place was the gathering spot of leading-edge artists and poets including Allen Ginsberg who gave readings there that were shocking to many persons.

However, Remington became weary of Abstract Expressionism, perceiving that paintings in that style had little distinction, one from the other.  Reaching for a completely different discipline, she went to the Orient where she lived in Japan with a Japanese family, learned the language, and studied calligraphy with Toyoda Senseil.  For her, this immersion resulted in focus on the reality of objects, and refinement and control in the execution.  However, her Eastern travels ended when she nearly drowned in India in the Ganges River, while she was working as a cook with a technological team.  Coming this close to death, she decided it was time to focus her life on her career.

She returned to San Francisco, supported herself as a waitress, and devoted herself to creating a painting style that was uniquely her own.  Her mature style combines thick paint and detailed images, strong contrasts of light and dark, and a limited palette. These paintings "can best be described as having a porthole effect---one seems to be looking through a central opening at mysterious light spaces that suggest sea, sky, and infinity, and yet seem to reverse themselves and become a flat mirror..." (Rubinstein 334).

In 1965, Remington moved to New York City, where she lives today (2003).  In addition to painting, she has also been an art instructor in California at the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of California at Davis, and at Cooper Union in New York.

The Newport Harbor Art Museum in California gave Remington a 1984 retrospective exhibition. Deborah Remington worked with color lithography during 1973 to 1980 in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Tamarind Institute.

Sources include:
Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, American Women Artists
Jules and Nancy Heller, North American Women Artists of the 20th Century

Added note:
Deborah Remington passed on in 2010.