{{Short description|Australian artist (born 1946)}} {{for|the American academic|Denise O'Neil Green}} {{Use Australian English|date=June 2020}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}} '''Denise Green''' {{post-nominals|country=AUS|AM}} (born 1946) is an Australian painter living and working in New York City.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=http://www.denisegreen.net/biography/|title=Biography {{!}} DENISE GREEN|website=www.denisegreen.net|language=en-US|access-date=2017-04-11}}</ref> She is known for her contributions to New Image Painting, an ambiguous art movement that began in the late 1970s.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100231583|title=New Image Painting|website=Oxford Reference}}</ref> Her paintings are typically abstract and present an idea rather than a formal representation of a subject. Her work is both analytic in structure and intuitive in colour and gesture.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=Resonating: Denise Green|last=Green|first=Denise|year=2001|isbn=0646412612|location=Brisbane}}</ref>
== Early life and education == Denise Green was born in Australia in 1946 and grew up in Brisbane.<ref name=":0"/> During her early years in Brisbane, she developed a strong interest in Aboriginal art.<ref name=":2">{{Cite book|title=Metonymy in Contemporary Art: A New Paradigm|last=Green|first=Denise|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|year=2005|location=Minneapolis}}</ref> The work created by these indigenous artists continued to serve as inspiration throughout her extensive career.<ref name=":2" />
Green left Australia in 1966 to live and study in Europe, where she married her first husband, Bruce Wolmer, and developed a taste for abstract art. She studied in Paris at the College de France but dropped out, the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts Supérieure but did not finish, and the Sorbonne, as well did not finish.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|title=Denise Green|last=Rumley|first=Katrina|publisher=Craftsman House|year=1998}}</ref> Her brief architectural studies at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts Supérieure continued to serve as an influence on her earlier works even after she relocated to New York City.<ref name=":4">{{Cite book|title=New Image Painting|last=Marshall|first=Richard|year=1978|location=New York|pages=26}}</ref> After living in Paris for three years, Green left Europe to attend graduate school at Hunter College in New York. There, she met Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell who became her teachers and mentors, introducing her to the artistic movements of abstract expressionism, minimalism, and conceptual art.<ref name=":3" /> Under their instruction, she developed a foundation in Western modernism.<ref name=":0" />
In the 1970s, Green spent time traveling in India.<ref name=":3" /> Her travels throughout the East to countries including India, Burma, Japan, and Indonesia were motivated by her visit to Kuringai Chase in the artist's native Australia, a sacred site to Australian Aboriginals.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Zabel|first=Barbara|date=May 2007|title=An Interview with Denise Green|journal=World Literature Today|volume=81|pages=55}}</ref> This exposure to non-Western art influenced the artist's oeuvre and served as a catalyst for her ongoing interest in combining Eastern and Western thinking in her work, a topic that she discusses at length in her book ''Metonymy in Art: a New Paradigm''.<ref name=":2" />
In 2007, Green was made a Member of the Order of Australia,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://honours.pmc.gov.au/honours/awards/1133761|publisher=It's an Honour|title=GREEN, Denise|access-date=23 April 2017}}</ref> one of the highest recognitions of achievement and service for Australian citizens.<ref name=":0" />
== Work == Green was first recognized for her paintings at the Whitney Museum of American Art's exhibition ''New Image Painting'' in 1978.<ref name=":1" /> Her work is included in major museum collections, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.<ref name=":0" /> The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has two of Greens paintings in their permanent collection, ''To Draw On'' (1977) and ''Taxes'' (1993). ''To Draw On'' (1977) was included in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's 1987 exhibition, ''Emerging Artists 1978-1986: Selections From the Exxon Series'' and is an example of the artist's contribution to New Image Painting.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/04/arts/art-exxon-show-at-the-guggenheim.html?pagewanted=all|title=ART: EXXON SHOW AT THE GUGGENHEIM|last=Smith|first=Roberta|date=1987|work=The New York Times}}</ref>
Green's earlier works are predominantly cityscapes, such as ''Laight St., View No. 1'' (1975).<ref name=":1" /> The paintings that she made during her first years in New York often focused on the architecture of building facades, evidently inspired by her architectural studies in Paris in the 1960s.<ref name=":4" /> During the mid- to late-1970s, her work became more abstracted as her focus shifted to the portrayal of centralized objects isolated in space.<ref name=":1" /> In the 1980s, her work became even more abstracted with works like ''Summer Heat'' (1981). With this work she introduces the use of ambiguous, calligraphic marks that allude to written language.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Bell|first=Tiffany|date=1999|title=Language and Intuition|url=http://www.denisegreen.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Art-in-America-1999.pdf|journal=Art in America}}</ref> During this period of her oeuvre, Green emphasized strong colours and basic forms, like circles and fan shapes.<ref name=":1" />
The early 1990s marked another shift in her style with an exhibition in Sydney, Australia in 1992 at Roslyn Okley9 Gallery. Here, she exhibited eight large canvases that were predominately black and white. These works, including ''Cinderella What?'' (1992) and ''Snow White?'' (1992), provided a drastic contrast to Green's previous, colour-dominated works.<ref name=":3" /> The artist describes this series of black and white paintings as a response to her father's death. These works in particular illuminate the connection that the artist draws between all of her work and her own personal narrative.<ref name=":1" />
In 2013, Green and her husband, Dr. Francis X. Claps, donated a gift of 80 works on paper and 36 paintings by Green valued at more than one million Australian dollars to the University of Queensland Art Museum.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2013/09/million-dollar-gift-uq-pays-tribute-australian-artist-denise-green|title=Million dollar gift to UQ pays tribute to Australian artist Denise Green|work=UQ News|access-date=2017-04-21|language=en}}</ref>
Since the beginning of her career, Green has had more than 130 one-person shows and her work has been shown in nine museum retrospectives since 1999, including venues at MoMA PS1, New York and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.mca.com.au/collection/artist/green-denise/|title=Denise Green|website=Museum of Contemporary Art Australia|language=en-GB|access-date=2017-04-21}}</ref> The artist continues to paint, take photographs, and make collages and works on paper today.<ref name=":0" />
== Works == Green is the author of two books: ''Metonymy in Art: a New Paradigm'', published by the University of Minnesota Press and Macmillan Art Publishers (Australia) in 2005, and ''An Artist's Odyssey'', released by the same publishers in 2012.<ref name=":0" />
== References == {{reflist|30em}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Green, Denise}} Category:1946 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century Australian women artists Category:20th-century Australian artists Category:21st-century Australian women artists Category:21st-century Australian artists Category:Australian painters Category:Artists from Brisbane Category:Australian women painters Category:Hunter College alumni Category:University of Paris alumni Category:Australian emigrants to the United States Category:Members of the Order of Australia Category:Australian expatriates in France