AMERICAN, b. 1941

After studying under art world giants—James Rosenquist, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, and Alex Katz, among others—at Yale in the mid-1960s, Jennifer Bartlett went on to become one of the most important artistic figures of the ’70s. Additionally, her groundbreaking work, which traverses painting, printmaking, sculpture, and installation, positioned her as one of the first female artists of her generation to achieve both commercial and critical success.

Jennifer is one of the first female painters of her generation to be both commercially successful and critically acclaimed. Often early professional success overshadows an artist’s subsequent development. In Bartlett’s case, however, the mid-1970s were merely a point of departure for an exceptionally prolific and inventive career, succeeded by various bodies of work that exhaustively explored new methods and media, extended the artist’s vocabulary into sculpture, drawing, and printmaking, and led to designs for theater and film that demonstrate her innovative synthesis of diverse sources and styles.