Hedda Sterne

About

Hedda Sterne, born Hedwig Lindenberg in Bucharest, Romania, in 1910, was a prolific artist whose career bridged European Surrealism and American Abstract Expressionism. Beginning her studies at age eight with sculptor Frederic Storck, she was influenced by the avant-garde scene, working in Marcel Janco's atelier by age sixteen and mentored by Victor Brauner. She exhibited her first solo show in Bucharest in 1936 and participated in Paris surrealist exhibitions in 1938-1939. Fleeing World War II, she arrived in New York in 1941, where Peggy Guggenheim introduced her to key figures like André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, leading to her inclusion in the 1942 'First Papers of Surrealism' exhibition. Married to Saul Steinberg from 1944, she became the only woman in the 1951 'Irascibles' photograph of Abstract Expressionists.[1][2][3][5]

Surrealism transitioning to Abstract Expressionism, with abstraction, industrial forms, and conceptual elements