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Hedda Sterne
Photo of Hedda Sterne.jpg
Hedda Sterne in 1947, photographed by Margaret Bourke-White
Born
Hedwig Lindenberg

(1910-08-04)August 4, 1910
Bucharest, Romania
Died April 8, 2011(2011-04-08) (aged 100)
New York City, U.S.
Known for Painting, drawing, printmaking, collage
Notable work
 New York VII (1954); Machine 5 (1950); Third Avenue El (1952–53); New York, N.Y., 1955 (1955); New York (1956); Alaska I (1958)
Movement Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism
Spouse(s)
Friederich Stern
​
​
(m. 1932; div. 1944)​

​
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(m. 1944; sep. 1960)​

Hedda Sterne (born August 4, 1910 – died April 8, 2011) was an artist from Romania who later became an American citizen. She was a very active member of the New York School of painters. Her artwork is often linked to two important art styles: Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism.

Early Life and Learning

Hedda Sterne was born as Hedwig Lindenberg in Bucharest, Romania, on August 4, 1910. Her parents, Eugenie and Simon Lindenberg, were Jewish. Her father was a language teacher. Hedda also had an older brother, Edouard, who became a famous music conductor.

When they were young, Hedda and her brother learned music and languages. Hedda could read German, French, and English, besides Romanian. She often said that German philosophy and art history books helped her become an artist. At first, her parents wanted her to study piano. But Hedda convinced them to let her study art instead. She started her art training in 1918. Her first art teacher was a sculptor named Frederic Storck.

In 1919, Hedda's father died, and her mother remarried. By 1921, Hedda was going to a private girls' school in Bucharest.

In the late 1920s, Hedda often traveled to Vienna. There, she took classes in ceramics at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. In 1929, she started studying art history and philosophy at the University of Bucharest. She learned from many smart thinkers. In 1932, she married Friederich (Fritz) Stern and stopped her formal studies.

Early Art Career and Surrealism

Hedda Sterne also worked in the studio of Marcel Janco. He was a co-founder of the Dada art movement and a Surrealist painter. Janco had returned to Bucharest from Switzerland and France. Hedda became a big part of Bucharest's exciting art and writing groups. She often said she "grew up with Surrealism." Her close friends included artists like Victor Brauner and Medi Dinu.

From the late 1920s, after marrying Fritz Stern in 1932, Hedda often traveled between Bucharest and Paris. In Paris, she briefly studied art with famous artists like Fernand Léger. She also attended art exhibitions. In the 1930s, she often met up with Victor Brauner in Paris. She paid close attention to new ideas in Surrealism. She was especially interested in something called automatism. This is a way of creating art without thinking too much, letting your subconscious guide you. By the late 1930s, she had her own special way of making automatic collages. Some of these collages were shown in big art shows in Paris.

World War II and Moving to America

In the summer of 1939, Hedda and her husband went back to Bucharest from France. It was their last time there. When World War II started in September, they began planning to move to the United States. However, Hedda did not go with her husband when he left for New York in the spring of 1940. She stayed in Bucharest with her family. In January 1941, she saw the Bucharest pogrom, which was a time of great violence and political trouble.

After trying for several months to get all the papers needed to leave Romania, Hedda finally left Lisbon for New York. She sailed on a ship called the S.S.Excambion on October 17, 1941.

Arriving in New York

Hedda Sterne arrived in New York in late October 1941. There, she met her husband again. Soon after, they changed their last name from Stern to Stafford. But by late 1942, she was showing her art using the name "Hedda Sterne." She added an "e" to her former married name to keep a link to the name she used in Europe.

In late 1941, Hedda set up an art studio and apartment in New York. It was close to Peggy Guggenheim's home. Peggy Guggenheim was a famous art collector. Hedda and Peggy became good friends. Through Peggy, Hedda met many Surrealist artists she had known in Paris, like Marcel Duchamp. Around this time, Hedda also became good friends with the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. She helped convince Saint-Exupéry to use his own drawings to illustrate his famous book The Little Prince.

In 1942, Hedda's art was part of an important show called The First Papers of Surrealism. By 1943, her work was often shown at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery in New York. This included a show in 1943 called Exhibition by 31 Women.

In February 1943, Hedda met another artist and Romanian refugee, Saul Steinberg. They married on October 11, 1944, after her first marriage ended. By the end of 1943, Hedda also started working with art dealer Betty Parsons. Betty Parsons gave Hedda her first solo art show in the U.S. in November. When the Betty Parsons Gallery opened in 1947, Hedda was one of the first artists to be shown there.

The New York School and the "Irascibles"

Hedda Sterne's art was shown in many big exhibitions of the New York School in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1950s, Hedda made a special contribution to Abstract Expressionism. She used commercial spray paint to show movement and light in her abstract paintings of roads and city scenes.

In 1950, Hedda was a key person in the "Artists' Sessions at Studio 35." This was a discussion about modern art in New York and what artists wanted to achieve. Many famous artists were there, including Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. After this two-day meeting, Hedda was one of 18 painters and ten sculptors who signed an open letter. This letter was sent to the president of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. They were protesting that the museum's art juries were too old-fashioned.

The news coverage of this letter, and a famous group photograph, made these artists well-known. After the letter was printed in The New York Times, a newspaper called The Herald Tribune called the group the "Irascible 18." "Irascible" means easily angered. They were criticized for saying the museum didn't respect modern art. Life magazine also covered the protest in January 1951. They included a photograph by Nina Leen. Fifteen of the artists who signed the letter were in the photo, including Hedda Sterne.

Even though two women sculptors also signed the letter, Hedda Sterne was the only woman in the famous photograph. This made her name known to many people who didn't know her art. Near the end of her life, she said, "I am known more for that darn photo than for 80 years of work."

Later Career

In 1963, Hedda Sterne received a Fulbright Fellowship for painting. She spent more than a year working in Venice, Italy. When she came back to New York in 1964, Hedda did not feel pressured to create one specific art style that would sell well. She didn't like the idea of having an art "career." Instead, she preferred to follow her own path of discovery and expression. Her art from the 1960s onward is often seen as a series of "series." These series showed Hedda's growing interest in how we see things, how signs and symbols work, and how we think about life and meditation.

Even though Hedda started to spend less time in the art world and live a more private life in the 1960s, she continued to have many exhibitions. Her first big show looking back at her work was in 1977 at the Montclair Art Museum. In 1985, her second big show, "Hedda Sterne: Forty Years," was held at the Queens Museum. In 2006, her third big show, "Uninterrupted Flux: Hedda Sterne; A Retrospective," was held at the Krannert Art Museum.

Hedda was an artist who created a lot of work. She made art almost every day for most of her career. She kept creating new art even in her 80s and 90s, even when her eyesight was getting worse. By 1998, she could no longer paint, but she continued to draw. Between 2004 and 2008, Hedda had two strokes. These strokes made it harder for her to see and move. Hedda Sterne died on April 8, 2011, when she was 100 years old.

Relationship with Saul Steinberg

Hedda Sterne and Saul Steinberg met in February 1943. Both were Jewish people from Romania who had recently moved from Bucharest. However, they had not known each other in Europe. Soon after they met, Steinberg left New York to serve in the U.S. Naval Reserve. He spent much of 1943 and 1944 in places like China, India, and Italy. He created pictures for propaganda, which means art used to spread ideas.

Hedda and Steinberg wrote many letters to each other while he was away. Many of these letters are kept in special archives. In 1944, Hedda agreed to marry Steinberg when he returned. She traveled to Reno, Nevada to get a divorce from her first husband. Hedda and Steinberg were married in New York on October 11, 1944.

Life Magazine wrote an article about the couple in August 1951. It was titled "Steinberg and Sterne: Romanian-Born Cartoonist and Artist-Wife Ambush the World with Pen and Paintbrush."

Hedda and Steinberg lived together in New York until 1960, when they separated. However, they remained close friends and stayed married until Steinberg's death in 1999. After Hedda's death in 2011, she was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

Awards and Recognition

Hedda Sterne won second prize at the Art Institute of Chicago Annual in 1957. In 1963, she received a Fulbright Fellowship and studied in Venice. In 1967, her work won first prize at the Art Institute of Newport Annual. The American Academy of Arts & Letters gave her awards in 1971 and 1984. In 1999, the French Minister of Culture gave Hedda Sterne the title of Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. This is a special honor for artists.

Artistic Style

Hedda Sterne never liked to put her art or herself into any specific group. In a book called Originals: American Women Artists, Hedda said:

I believe ... that isms and other classifications are misleading and diminishing. What entrances me in art is what cannot be entrapped in words.

Art critic Grace Glueck wrote that Hedda Sterne saw her many different artworks as "in flux," meaning always changing, rather than finished statements. She stayed very independent from popular art styles and trends, including Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. Even though she never had one "signature style," Hedda Sterne's explorations created a small world of powerful images.

Legacy

Hedda Sterne has often been overlooked in the stories of American art after World War II. When she died, she was possibly the last living artist from the first group of the New York School. Hedda Sterne saw her many different artworks as always changing, rather than fixed statements.

In 2006, art historian Josef Helfenstein wrote that Hedda Sterne kept her own unique style. She did this even when she knew famous artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Her independence showed how much artistic and personal honesty she had. The amazing variety of Hedda's work, from using surrealist ideas to exploring new kinds of painting, shows her adventurous spirit. However, because her styles were so different, and she didn't care about the art market, she has sometimes been left out of art history books.

In 2016, Hedda Sterne's work was shown at Van Doren Waxter gallery. The show was called "Machines 1947-1951." The New York Times wrote that these paintings showed machines inspired by farm equipment. They also showed her connection to Surrealism. The article said it was wonderful to finally see Hedda Sterne being taken seriously as a painter, not just known for the famous "Irascibles" photograph.

Art Collections

Hedda Sterne's artwork can be found in many important art collections, including:

See also

  • The Hedda Sterne Foundation website
  • List of centenarians (artists)

Books About Hedda Sterne

  • Hedda Sterne; Sarah L Eckhardt; Josef Helfenstein; Lawrence Rinder; Krannert Art Museum.; University of Virginia. Uninterrupted flux : Hedda Sterne, a retrospective. (Champaign, Ill. : Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, 2006) ISBN: 1-883015-37-5
  • Hedda Sterne; Queens Museum of Art. Hedda Sterne, forty years : the Queens Museum, February 2–April 14, 1985. (Flushing, N.Y. : The Museum, 1985)
  • Michel Butor, Hedda Sterne, La Révolution dans l'Arboretum (New York: Philippe Briet Editions, 1995). This book has four poems by Michel Butor and fifteen drawings by Hedda Sterne.
  • Cosmin Nasui, Hedda Sterne – The Discovery of Early Years 1910-1941 (PostModernism Museum Publishing House 2015, ISBN: 978-606-93751-1-2). This book studies Hedda Sterne's life and work in Europe before she moved to New York in 1941.
  • Eleanor C Munro. Originals : American women artists (New York : Da Capo Press, 2000) ISBN: 0-306-80955-9

Articles About Hedda Sterne

  • PostModernism Museum presents works by Hedda Sterne at Art 15 London, Artdaily.org, May 21, 2015.
  • Glueck, Grace. "Art in Review; Hedda Stern", "New York Times", March 10, 2006.
  • Simon, Joan. "Patterns of thought: Hedda Sterne". Art in America, 95.2 2007. 110–59.
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