Elaine Hamilton-O'Neal
Encyclopedia
Elaine Hamilton-O'Neal, (October 13, 1920 – March 15, 2010), professionally known as Elaine Hamilton, was an internationally known American abstract painter
and mural
ist born near Catonsville, Maryland
. She was professionally admired by the influential French critic Michel Tapié de Céleyran
and exhibited internationally in solo and multiple-artist exhibits in the United States, Mexico, South Asia, Japan, and throughout Europe. She showed twice in the Venice Biennale
and won first prize at the 1968 Biennale de Menton
in France. She is known for the work of her final stylistic phase, known as action painting
.
Hamilton is also a high mountain climber with over 30 years experience climbing the Himilayas. She had climbed K2
, which is part of the Karakoram Range and known as the Savage Mountain due to the difficulty of ascent, with the second highest fatality rate among those who attempt to climb it. For every four people who have reached the summit, one has died trying. Over the years, Hamilton made nine different trips to different mountains of the Himalayas. She also visited the former kingdom of Sikkim
as a guest of Tashi Namgyal
, the ruling Chogyal
(King) of Sikkim and the royal family.
For three decades, Hamilton traveled throughout India, Pakistan, the former kingdom of Sikkim (annexed by India in 1975) and Japan. In Pakistan in 1959, she was asked to produce work for an exhibition that was administered by the foreign minister of Pakistan. The ministries of Pakistan also gave her permission to make her first K2 expedition. This expedition resulted in the welcome realization of her individual artistic vision and the creation of her first completely abstract work, Burst Beyond the Image.
. She was the daughter of Robert Bruce and Lee (née Wood) Hamilton. Paradise was home to her maternal grandparents, William and Caroline Wood. Hamilton was raised at Emerald Hill, the family estate in Daniels, along the Patapsco River
, just north of Ellicott City.
Hamilton spent a portion of her childhood growing up near Orange Grove in the Patapsco Valley State Park
. Orange Grove is a mill town that supported the flour mill on the Baltimore County side of the river. It is known as one of the most scenic areas of Patapsco. During the 1920s, for four or five months during the summer, the Hamilton family would set up camp in the area, which was a fashionable vacation spot for wealthy families at the time. The state park service encouraged middle class and working families to camp there for extended periods, "roughing it pleasantly" for their spiritual and physical refreshment.
Her experience at the park was a blend of rugged outdoor living complemented with the trappings of the modern middle-class lifestyle. The family slept on straw mattress cots under a canvas
shelter and made several trips a day down to the local spring for fresh water, and yet, they cooked their meals on a modern oil stove, wired electric power in from Bloede's Dam
, and brought their piano to the campsite to enjoy music played in their "living room" tent. They also walked over a mile once a week to nearby Orange Grove to buy their weekly groceries and supplies. By carving out a place to live in the wilderness, Hamilton asserted that she was able to develop self confidence and a sense of adventure, and she "learned to be creative and inventive."
At the park, Hamilton discovered how to paint and swim, and she developed an acute hearing ability and "a strong sense of smell." She learned to identify animal and bird sounds and how to avoid copperhead snakes
. With only a few other children around, Hamilton developed a stronger relationship with her older brothers, Robert Jr. and Doug.
Summers at the park played a critical role in her eventual status as a Fulbright Scholar and career as an artist. In this sense, Hamilton's experience at Patapsco exemplified the white middle-class desire to identify with the rugged experience of the working classes while attaining the intellectual and cultural standards typified by the upper classes. Hamilton's experience at Patapsco State Park was both rugged and refined.
In her later years, Hamilton would often state that the one place throughout her life that most defined her, was the platform tent where her family lived each summer when she was a child.
In 1942, Hamilton met William "Bill" O'Neal. They were married, soon after being introduced at a black-tie dinner at the Baltimore Country Club
. O'Neal was not present for most of his wife's exploits, instead supporting her "morally and physically," from afar, she says, while he worked in the aerospace industry in Alabama.
Throughout their marriage, the O'Neals mostly lived apart, and they had no children. "We discussed these things before we were married," says Hamilton. "We laid out our lives. We understood each other. Neither one of us wanted to be 50 percent in our work and 50 percent parents. We wanted to be 100 percent of whatever we were."
In 1952, Hamilton and her husband, Bill O'Neal, purchased the Old Shades Creek Mill in Mountain Brook, Alabama
. However, international exhibits continued to take Hamilton from one city to the next. Hamilton described her relationship with O'Neal in her last interview in the Baltimore Magazine. While Hamilton was on world tours, O'Neal "was working to put the first man on the moon," says Hamilton. He was initially based in Baltimore, employed by the Glenn L. Martin Company
(now Lockheed Martin
), though he traveled frequently and finally ended up in Birmingham
.
In the early 1960s, Hamilton moved to Paris. In 1971, Hamilton purchased a chateau
in France, where she lived and worked for the next 30 years. In the meantime, O'Neal continued to maintain the home at the Old Mill, which meandered alongside the edge of Shades Creek in Mountain Brook. Built in 1926, the Old Mill remains a symbol of the City of Mountain Brook and is depicted in the city's official seal.
Despite the geographic distance, Hamilton says they were close. Hamilton lived in her chateau in France, dropping everything, she says, "when my husband and his cronies would fly over for a French holiday. I'd cook and entertain them, and then they'd fly back." In turn, Hamilton would fly to Birmingham, where her husband had settled to work at Hayes Aircraft as vice president of engineering. Hamilton enjoy her trips back to Mountain Brook, where she would gracefully act as hostess, entertaining some of the most prominent scientists in early aerospace engineering.
In 1945, Hamilton graduated from Maryland Institute
(now MICA) and went on to study for two years with Robert Brackman
in New York as a member of the Art Students League
.
In 1949, Hamilton continued her education at the National Polytechnic Institute
in Mexico City. She studied under the mentorship the mural
ist Diego Rivera
. While there, she received a commission of her own and began working on a 47-foot mural she painted for the privately-owned Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende
.
Hamilton dismisses any comparisons to her contemporaries or artists who worked in the first half of the 1900s. She was not interested in Picasso
, she says, and while she admired the work of José Clemente Orozco
and Diego Rivera, she mainly wanted to learn the techniques required for outdoor murals.
By the time Hamilton went to Mexico in 1949, she'd been married for seven years. In 1951, Hamilton returned to Baltimore, to present a solo exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art
. In 1952, she traveled to Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship to study painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti
in Florence, Italy. In 1953, when the Fulbright grant was extended for another year, she chose to remain in Italy for seven more years. After exhibiting in Rome, Milan, and at the Venice Bienniale, she found herself drawn to the Himalayas
.
The Himalayas are a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau
. By extension, it is also the name of a massive mountain system that includes the Karakoram
, the Hindu Kush
, and smaller ranges that extend out from the Pamir Knot. Together, the Himalayan mountain system is home to the world's highest peaks, which include Mount Everest
and K2
, which is part of the Karakoram Range.
The mountains have profoundly shaped the cultures of South Asia; many Himalayan peaks are sacred in Hinduism
, Buddhism
, and Sikhism
. K2 is known as the Savage Mountain due to the difficulty of ascent, with the second highest fatality rate among those who attempt to climb it. For every four people who have reached the summit, one has died trying. Unlike Annapurna
, the mountain with the highest fatality rate, K2 has never been climbed in winter.
Hamilton explained her draw to the high mountain country in Pakistan in no uncertain terms. "I wanted to see where the earth and the sky touched," she said. Over the years, she made nine different trips to different mountains of the Himalayas. She also visited the former kingdom of Sikkim
as a guest of Tashi Namgyal
, the ruling Chogyal
(King) of Sikkim
and the royal family.
Namgyal was the 11th ruler of the Namgyal dynasty of Sikkim. He was born in Tibet and crowned by the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, he was a strong advocate for closer links with India. On his death in 1963, he was succeeded as Chogyal by his son Palden Thondup Namgyal
, with whom Hamilton maintained close ties. Legend has it that the Buddhist saint Guru Rinpoche visited Sikkim in the 9th century, introduced Buddhism and foretold the era of the monarchy. It was here, in Sikkim, where Hamilton was introduced to Buddhism. She maintained a close fondness for the country and its people, chosing to return every year for 30 years.
Of her expeditions over the years to K2 and Everest, she writes, "I often return to the 'Abode of the Snows' for it seems there my thoughts crystallize into forms that find their way into the movements, rhythms, pulsating in and out of my canvases."
During these years, Hamilton was exposed to and influenced by early Sienese
and later Renaissance
painting, especially Giotto
's use of space that inspired her move toward abstraction. Hamilton lived in Florence with her paintings displayed in Rome, Venice, Milan, and Florence. While she would return to Maryland almost annually for visits and exhibitions of her work, she remained in Europe and ended up spending the rest of her career abroad.
in the 1960s and thereafter. Having won the prize for portrait painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1945, it was natural that she went on to study in New York with Robert Brackman
, who is a master of realistic portraitures
and other figurative
painting.
In the late 1940s to early 1950s, the influence of Diego Rivera is evident in the earthy textures and colors, as well as in the heavy, sculpted, quasi-cubist forms of her increasingly abstract paintings (see right). Meanwhile, the scale of her work increased, also as a result of her study with Rivera.
In the early 1950s there are other canvases that show nightmarish, contorted, bloody-looking images suggestive of slaughter, but unidentifiable bodies or body parts, somewhat in the manner of Francis Bacon
. One painting shows a man with massive hands folded on his knees. Others, in a transitional stage of her work, are broken into planes, cubist-style. A painting from Mexico, which she says is the dead child of her maid, is a shadowy face, surrounded by leaves and swirls in deep shades of crimson.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Hamilton exhibited her paintings throughout Italy at the Venice Biennale, Rome, and Milan, as well as the Uffizi Gallery
in Florence. She also exhibited at the Pakistan Arts Council
in Karachi. Seven years later, she found herself drawn to the Himalayas
. In 1956 and again in 1958, Hamilton was an invited exhibitor at the Venice Biennale. During her extensive travels in the 1950s, she remained prominent in the Baltimore contemporary art
scene, winning the Popular Prize in the Baltimore Museum of Art's Maryland Artists Exhibition in 1952 and again in 1959.
Hamilton had solo exhibitions of her work in major galleries and museums all over the world. The various cities that exhibited her work includes Rome; Milan; Turin, Italy; Florence, Italy; Mexico City; Osaka; Tokyo; and Karachi, Pakistan. She was featured in numerous multi-artist exhibitions in these cities as well as in Paris, the Whitney Museum in New York City, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC.
Around 1960, she took up a personal approach to action painting and it is for her paintings in this later, abstract expressionist
manner that she is probably best known. She is sometimes classed as a lyrical abstractionist
. In 1968, she won first prize in the Biennale de Menton in France.
As Hamilton's presence in the art world continued to grow, visual art students looked to her for inspiration. Her influence extends across Europe and around the world. One individual in particular was a young Pakistani artist, named Ismail Gulgee
(or Guljee, as it is sometimes spelled). Partha Mitter wrote of Hamilton's influence in her book, Indian Art
, published by the Oxford University Press
. "Impressed by the visiting American painter Elaine Hamilton, Guljee enthusiastically plunged into action painting..." Jane Turner also wrote of Hamilton's influence on Gulgee in The Dictionary of Art. "In 1960, Ismail Gulgee, known for his portraiture, began experimenting with non-objective painting (in the manner of Jackson Pollock
) after working with visiting American artist, Elaine Hamilton."
According to David L. Craven, Distinquished Professor of Art History at the University of New Mexico
, Hamilton became something of an ambassador in South Asia
: "Abstract expressionism was promoted as a universal style in Pakistan during the 1950s by a U.S. artist named Elaine Hamilton."
While Hamilton was living in France, she gained the professional admiration and support of Michel Tapié de Céleyran
, who was a highly influential French critic and respected painter. Tapié was an early advocate of European Abstraction Lyrique
, also known as tachisme
, which is generally regarded as the European equivalent of abstract expressionism. He was descended from an old, aristocratic French family; notably, he was the second cousin of the painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
.
Tapié was a generous critic, championing the works of young and upcoming artists. He organized and curated scores of exhibitions of new and modern art in major cities all over the world. In 1952, Tapié was the curator
of Jackson Pollock
's solo exhibition in Paris, which took place at the Studio Paul Facchetti.
The French lyrical abstractionist or tachiste, Georges Mathieu
was another artist of whom Tapié was an early champion. In 1952, Tapié curated Mathieu's exhibit at the Stable Gallery
in New York. Mathieu studied literature and philosophy before switching to art at the age of twenty-one. After painting realistic landscapes and portraits, he developed a highly distinctive Abstract Expressionist personal style, which grew out of an emotionally driven, improvised and intuitive act of painting. He was often compared to Pollock and said of the artist, that he considered him to be the "greatest living American painter."
Tapié co-founded the International Center of Aesthetic Research in Turin, Italy in 1960, with architect Luigi Moretti
. The Center was a facility for the study and exhibition of art, as well as for the publication and dissemination of critical, investigative, or theoretical works on art. The institution lasted until 1987, ending upon the death of Tapié.
In 1960, Hamilton created her first purely oil on canvas abstract painting, entitled Burst Beyond the Image, after an expedition to K2
in Pakistan
. This painting was Hamilton's foray into the abstract world of action painting, which dramatically records the gestural
action of painting itself. Today, the painting remains in Hamilton's personal collection.
In late 1960, full of inspiration after her most recent Himalayan adventure, upon her return to France, she quickly created many more of these huge "action" canvases in preparation for solo and group exhibitions in Japan. About this time, Hamilton caught the attention of Tapié and became the benefactor of his generosity when he exhibited her paintings at the Fujikawa Gallery in Osaka, Japan. The exhibit took place from April 12–18, 1961 and was presented in collaboration with the Gutai Group
, which was an association of avant-garde
artists representative of Japan's post-war art world. A second showing curated by Tapié was presented at the International Center of Aesthetic Research in Turin, Italy.
The 2006, Benezit Dictionary of Artists
is emphatic in its praise, stating the following of Hamilton. "A globetrotter who has scaled the heights of the Himalayas, Hamilton makes profoundly serious work. Clearly part of the movement known as 'lyrical gestural abstraction', her painting is full of verve and invention and manifests an extraordinary gift for colour and substance."
Touring her home in 2009, Martha Thomas, writer with the Baltimore Magazine, was able to view Hamilton's many works within the artist's private collection. Rather than hanging on the walls, Hamilton's earlier paintings were found resting safely stacked against them.
_museum_of_art.jpg)
Most of the paintings on display in Hamilton's lower level gallery were her later works: bright and energetic splashes of color with swirls, drips, and slashes of paint on canvases measuring six feet long and four or five feet high. A few of the canvases were round. Hamilton stated that she wanted to challenge herself and "get out of the square thing." In some, color bursts from the center like a supernova against a dark background. In others, the fury of colorful strokes completely covers the canvas.
Her work has been described as abstract expressionism and "action painting," but Hamilton says the Buddhist monks she knew in Tibet described it best: "It's meditation in action," she says. "That's not a contradiction. When you meditate, it doesn't mean empty. It's making space for things to come in."
Hamilton sustained and developed the abstract approach to painting for the rest of her life. Today, the majority of her work is in the collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art
in Alabama. Her oil on canvas work entitled, Silent Space, which was completed c. 1969 is part of the collection belonging to Sarfaraz Aziz, who is the director of the brokerage firm of Aziz Fidahuesin & Company in London. Other pieces remain in public and private collections in Austria, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Pakistan, Switzerland and the United States.
Throughout her life, Hamilton called a variety of places "home." At one time while in France, she owned a 42-room chateau, filled with fine art and antiques. She eventually downsized to the warmth of a quaint French chateau with just 18 rooms.
Hamilton lived in apartments in Florence and New York, in a tent at the Mount Everest base camp, and when she was in Mexico City, she was housed by the Rotary Club
of Houston, Texas
. After returning to America, Hamilton and her husband lived together in an historic, converted grist mill in Mountain Brook, southwest of Birmingham, Alabama.
In 2002, the couple decided to sell the Old Mill and move to Maryland, where they would live together after so many years. On the day after their 60th wedding anniversary, as the couple prepared to move, Bill went to the doctor to have his ears checked. Upon further examination, he was transferred to the hospital emergency room. He died of heart failure that day.
Hamilton continued on to Maryland, as planned, to live close to her family. She described her brothers as wonderful friends, and she also had strong bonds with her nieces and nephews. "I had always told them that if they ever wanted to run away, they could run to me," says the aunt. "I was far away, and safe." She also had space for guests. "Sometimes too much space," she laughed.
In 2009, Hamilton got by with just one guest room, decorated in shades of green: painted twin beds with tasseled silk spreads she had made in France, with olive green Tibetan rugs on the hardwood floors. The walls carefully held relief rubbings from tombs in Pakistan. Her travels are in the past. But evidence of a remarkable life is all around.
At the end of her life, Hamilton was content living in Granite
, near her childhood home. To Hamilton, her eight-room home felt like a piece of France, scooped up and replanted in the Emerald Hill countryside. The home had a brick façade, with Palladian windows, and a gravel drive leading up to the front door. It was expansive with noble proportions and high, stepped tray ceilings that she designed herself in the wide, one-story "Chartreuse" style, common in southern France.
A tour of her three-year-old home is a testament to a lifetime of adventure. "It's filled with souvenirs," she said. "It's a vagabond's house." She emitted a hearty bit of laughter from her small frame, her eyes sparkled behind thick glasses.
Her Louis XV sofas dated back to the 18th century were adorned with hand-embroidered pillows from Pakistan. The Regency fireplace mantel—heavy marble carved in scrolls, which Hamilton shipped from France, displayed a bronze cat by the sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye
, antique toys from India, and a pair of cloisonné
vases (exported from Tibet on the back of a yak). Her dining room furniture dates to the Renaissance, the table embellished with a pair of sturdy brass candlesticks from the same period, which she bought for $200 as an art student in Florence. "They are the real thing," she notes. "A lot of people have sat in front of those."
Everywhere, there are rugs, many of them brightly colored in traditional Tibetan motifs and thick knotted-wool patterns of dragons, tigers, and flowers. In addition to rugs, skins from leopards and tigers—with heads intact—are draped over seats along the wall and low tables in Hamilton's meditation room, a sanctuary off the library. The room is dominated by a gilded, wood altar, running from floor to ceiling, with nooks holding various representations of the Buddha. The walls are painted according to tradition: the deep earth red around the base, moving through horizontal bands of orange and gold representing various stages of clarity, and finally a blue ceiling, signifying nirvana. "I've had this identical room in every house I've owned for the last 40 years," Hamilton says. "Everything in Buddhism is symbolic and has definite meaning." She warns: "Don't use the word décor."
Whether or not they can be classified as décor, photographs seem to be a fundamental feature in Hamilton's effects. If the furniture, paintings, objets d'art—and even her sacred space—are not enough evidence of her adventures, there are plenty of photos to round out the story. There is a shot of her mother, a 1920s beauty with a feather boa-trimmed neckline and thick hair piled on her head; a photo of Hamilton making her way up an icy ledge in Pakistan's Karakoram range; and a picture of a Tibetan friend who is now a nurse in Pennsylvania thanks in part to Hamilton's largesse.
Hamilton rushes through each story, knowing that there are so many more to tell. Perhaps suspecting a visitor's disbelief—or in most cases, awe—she flutters her hands toward the library or her bedroom and says, "Oh, I have photos of all that," promising to provide proof that her wondrous tales really happened.
In the gallery, which she had constructed with high ceilings and recessed lighting to showcase her large canvases, Hamilton sifts through scrapbooks and locates a spread from the May 13, 1951 edition of The Baltimore Sun Magazine, its edges yellowed and brittle. Hamilton appears on the cover, swirling a voluminous cape with the headline, "Baltimore's Lady Bullfighter." She explains: "I saw the bullfights [in Mexico] and was traumatized. They gave me migraines." Her solution? "I had to find out what it was all about," so she trained to enter the ring.
At first, she explains, bullfighters swing the cape in wide circles, but "then begin to bring the bull closer and closer," shortening the span of the red cloth. She describes the contest as a mythic challenge between strength and intellect that "equalizes life and death." Hamilton notes that she did not actually kill the bull, but she did emerge from the encounter sore and covered with bruises. "You don't even realize you're getting grazed at the time," she says, "but you come out all black and blue."
Returning to her scrapbook, she points out a program from a 1951 solo show at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and a magazine photo of her standing on scaffolding in Mexico City, working on a 47-foot mural she painted at the art institute in San Miguel de Allende, after assisting the muralist Diego Rivera.
On Monday, March 15, 2010, Elaine Hamilton O'Neal died in Woodstock, Maryland due to unknown causes. She stopped painting around 2004, due to eye problems, but otherwise remained in good health. In her latter years, she was involved in her community, through her membership in the Great Patapsco Community Association, as well as the local art museum. She was a regular supporter of Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, where her brother Douglas serves as Vice-President of the 2009-2010 Board of Trustees. The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland is one of the finest small privately-formed art collections open to the public in the United States.
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
and mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
ist born near Catonsville, Maryland
Catonsville, Maryland
According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , all of it land.-Demographics:In 2010 Catonsville had a population of 41,567...
. She was professionally admired by the influential French critic Michel Tapié de Céleyran
Michel Tapié
Michel Tapié was an internationally active French critic, curator, and collector of art. He was an early and influential theorist and practitioner of "tachisme", which is generally regarded as the European equivalent of abstract expressionism...
and exhibited internationally in solo and multiple-artist exhibits in the United States, Mexico, South Asia, Japan, and throughout Europe. She showed twice in the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
and won first prize at the 1968 Biennale de Menton
Menton
Menton is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.Situated on the French Riviera, along the Franco-Italian border, it is nicknamed la perle de la France ....
in France. She is known for the work of her final stylistic phase, known as action painting
Action painting
Action painting sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied...
.
Hamilton is also a high mountain climber with over 30 years experience climbing the Himilayas. She had climbed K2
K2
K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest...
, which is part of the Karakoram Range and known as the Savage Mountain due to the difficulty of ascent, with the second highest fatality rate among those who attempt to climb it. For every four people who have reached the summit, one has died trying. Over the years, Hamilton made nine different trips to different mountains of the Himalayas. She also visited the former kingdom of Sikkim
Sikkim
Sikkim is a landlocked Indian state nestled in the Himalayan mountains...
as a guest of Tashi Namgyal
Tashi Namgyal
Tashi Namgyal was the ruling Chogyal of Sikkim from 1914 to 1963...
, the ruling Chogyal
Chogyal
The Chogyal were the monarchs of the former kingdoms of Sikkim and Ladakh, which were ruled by separate branches of the Namgyal family. The Chogyal, or divine ruler, was the absolute potentate of Sikkim from 1642 to 1975, when its monarchy was abrogated and its people voted to make Sikkim India's...
(King) of Sikkim and the royal family.
For three decades, Hamilton traveled throughout India, Pakistan, the former kingdom of Sikkim (annexed by India in 1975) and Japan. In Pakistan in 1959, she was asked to produce work for an exhibition that was administered by the foreign minister of Pakistan. The ministries of Pakistan also gave her permission to make her first K2 expedition. This expedition resulted in the welcome realization of her individual artistic vision and the creation of her first completely abstract work, Burst Beyond the Image.
Early years
Elaine Hamilton was born on October 13, 1920 to a middle-class family in Paradise, near Catonsville, MarylandCatonsville, Maryland
According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of , all of it land.-Demographics:In 2010 Catonsville had a population of 41,567...
. She was the daughter of Robert Bruce and Lee (née Wood) Hamilton. Paradise was home to her maternal grandparents, William and Caroline Wood. Hamilton was raised at Emerald Hill, the family estate in Daniels, along the Patapsco River
Patapsco River
The Patapsco River is a river in central Maryland which flows into Chesapeake Bay. The river's tidal portion forms the harbor for the city of Baltimore...
, just north of Ellicott City.
Hamilton spent a portion of her childhood growing up near Orange Grove in the Patapsco Valley State Park
Patapsco Valley State Park
Patapsco Valley State Park is located in Maryland, USA and extends along 32 miles of the Patapsco River, encompassing and five developed recreational areas. Recreational opportunities include hiking, fishing, camping, canoeing, horseback riding and mountain bike trails, as well as picnicking for...
. Orange Grove is a mill town that supported the flour mill on the Baltimore County side of the river. It is known as one of the most scenic areas of Patapsco. During the 1920s, for four or five months during the summer, the Hamilton family would set up camp in the area, which was a fashionable vacation spot for wealthy families at the time. The state park service encouraged middle class and working families to camp there for extended periods, "roughing it pleasantly" for their spiritual and physical refreshment.
Her experience at the park was a blend of rugged outdoor living complemented with the trappings of the modern middle-class lifestyle. The family slept on straw mattress cots under a canvas
Canvas
Canvas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other items for which sturdiness is required. It is also popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame...
shelter and made several trips a day down to the local spring for fresh water, and yet, they cooked their meals on a modern oil stove, wired electric power in from Bloede's Dam
Bloede's Dam
Patapsco Electric and Manufacturing of Ellicott City brought fame to the Patapsco River corridor in 1906 when it constructed the world’s first underwater hydroelectric plant. Named Bloede's Dam after the company’s president, Victor Gustav Bloede . Bloede, a German immigrant, was also the founder of...
, and brought their piano to the campsite to enjoy music played in their "living room" tent. They also walked over a mile once a week to nearby Orange Grove to buy their weekly groceries and supplies. By carving out a place to live in the wilderness, Hamilton asserted that she was able to develop self confidence and a sense of adventure, and she "learned to be creative and inventive."
At the park, Hamilton discovered how to paint and swim, and she developed an acute hearing ability and "a strong sense of smell." She learned to identify animal and bird sounds and how to avoid copperhead snakes
Agkistrodon contortrix
Agkistrodon contortrix is a species of venomous snake found in North America, a member of the Crotalinae subfamily. The more common name for the species is "copperhead". The behavior of Agkistrodon contortrix may lead to accidental encounters with humans...
. With only a few other children around, Hamilton developed a stronger relationship with her older brothers, Robert Jr. and Doug.
Summers at the park played a critical role in her eventual status as a Fulbright Scholar and career as an artist. In this sense, Hamilton's experience at Patapsco exemplified the white middle-class desire to identify with the rugged experience of the working classes while attaining the intellectual and cultural standards typified by the upper classes. Hamilton's experience at Patapsco State Park was both rugged and refined.
In her later years, Hamilton would often state that the one place throughout her life that most defined her, was the platform tent where her family lived each summer when she was a child.
Marriage
Baltimore Country Club
The Baltimore Country Club is a private club with two club facilities, one located in the Roland Park, Baltimore neighborhood of Baltimore, the other located in Lutherville, Maryland. The club was founded on January 12, 1898, and hosted the U.S. Open in 1898 and the PGA Championship in 1928. Its...
. O'Neal was not present for most of his wife's exploits, instead supporting her "morally and physically," from afar, she says, while he worked in the aerospace industry in Alabama.
Throughout their marriage, the O'Neals mostly lived apart, and they had no children. "We discussed these things before we were married," says Hamilton. "We laid out our lives. We understood each other. Neither one of us wanted to be 50 percent in our work and 50 percent parents. We wanted to be 100 percent of whatever we were."
In 1952, Hamilton and her husband, Bill O'Neal, purchased the Old Shades Creek Mill in Mountain Brook, Alabama
Mountain Brook, Alabama
Mountain Brook is a city in southeastern Jefferson County, Alabama, and a suburb of Birmingham. According to 2005 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city is 20,821. Mountain Brook is a particularly affluent city within the Birmingham metropolitan area and has appeared in several lists...
. However, international exhibits continued to take Hamilton from one city to the next. Hamilton described her relationship with O'Neal in her last interview in the Baltimore Magazine. While Hamilton was on world tours, O'Neal "was working to put the first man on the moon," says Hamilton. He was initially based in Baltimore, employed by the Glenn L. Martin Company
Glenn L. Martin Company
The Glenn L. Martin Company was an American aircraft and aerospace manufacturing company that was founded by the aviation pioneer Glenn L. Martin. The Martin Company produced many important aircraft for the defense of the United States and its allies, especially during World War II and the Cold War...
(now Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin is an American global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology company with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, in the Washington Metropolitan Area....
), though he traveled frequently and finally ended up in Birmingham
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
.
In the early 1960s, Hamilton moved to Paris. In 1971, Hamilton purchased a chateau
Château
A château is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor or a country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally—and still most frequently—in French-speaking regions...
in France, where she lived and worked for the next 30 years. In the meantime, O'Neal continued to maintain the home at the Old Mill, which meandered alongside the edge of Shades Creek in Mountain Brook. Built in 1926, the Old Mill remains a symbol of the City of Mountain Brook and is depicted in the city's official seal.
Despite the geographic distance, Hamilton says they were close. Hamilton lived in her chateau in France, dropping everything, she says, "when my husband and his cronies would fly over for a French holiday. I'd cook and entertain them, and then they'd fly back." In turn, Hamilton would fly to Birmingham, where her husband had settled to work at Hayes Aircraft as vice president of engineering. Hamilton enjoy her trips back to Mountain Brook, where she would gracefully act as hostess, entertaining some of the most prominent scientists in early aerospace engineering.
Educational background
Maryland Institute College of Art
Maryland Institute College of Art is an art and design college in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. It was founded in 1826 as the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, making it one of the first and oldest art colleges in the United States. In 2008, MICA was ranked #2 in the nation...
(now MICA) and went on to study for two years with Robert Brackman
Robert Brackman
Robert Brackman was an artist and teacher of Russian origin, best known for large figural works, portraits, and still lifes.-Biography:Born in Odes'ka Oblast, Ukraine, he emigrated from the Russian Empire in 1908....
in New York as a member of the Art Students League
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...
.
In 1949, Hamilton continued her education at the National Polytechnic Institute
National Polytechnic Institute
The National Polytechnic Institute colloquially known as the Polytechnic is one of the largest public universities in Mexico with 153.027 students at the high school, undergraduate and postgraduate levels...
in Mexico City. She studied under the mentorship the mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
ist Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...
. While there, she received a commission of her own and began working on a 47-foot mural she painted for the privately-owned Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende
San Miguel de Allende
San Miguel de Allende is a city and municipality located in the far eastern part of the state of Guanajuato in central Mexico. It is 274 km from Mexico City and 97 km from the state capital of Guanajuato...
.
Hamilton dismisses any comparisons to her contemporaries or artists who worked in the first half of the 1900s. She was not interested in Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, she says, and while she admired the work of José Clemente Orozco
José Clemente Orozco
José Clemente Orozco was a Mexican social realist painter, who specialized in bold murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others...
and Diego Rivera, she mainly wanted to learn the techniques required for outdoor murals.
By the time Hamilton went to Mexico in 1949, she'd been married for seven years. In 1951, Hamilton returned to Baltimore, to present a solo exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art
Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works...
. In 1952, she traveled to Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship to study painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti
Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze
The Accademia di Belle Arti is an art academy in Florence, Italy and it is now the operative branch of the still existing Accademia delle Arti del Disegno that was the first academy of drawing in Europe.-History:The Accademia delle Arti del Disegno The Accademia di Belle Arti ("Academy of Fine...
in Florence, Italy. In 1953, when the Fulbright grant was extended for another year, she chose to remain in Italy for seven more years. After exhibiting in Rome, Milan, and at the Venice Bienniale, she found herself drawn to the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
.
Himalayas
Tibetan Plateau
The Tibetan Plateau , also known as the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau is a vast, elevated plateau in Central Asia covering most of the Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai, in addition to smaller portions of western Sichuan, southwestern Gansu, and northern Yunnan in Western China and Ladakh in...
. By extension, it is also the name of a massive mountain system that includes the Karakoram
Karakoram
The Karakoram, or Karakorum , is a large mountain range spanning the borders between Pakistan, India and China, located in the regions of Gilgit-Baltistan , Ladakh , and Xinjiang region,...
, the Hindu Kush
Hindu Kush
The Hindu Kush is an mountain range that stretches between central Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. The highest point in the Hindu Kush is Tirich Mir in the Chitral region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.It is the westernmost extension of the Pamir Mountains, the Karakoram Range, and is a...
, and smaller ranges that extend out from the Pamir Knot. Together, the Himalayan mountain system is home to the world's highest peaks, which include Mount Everest
Mount Everest
Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at above sea level. It is located in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. The international boundary runs across the precise summit point...
and K2
K2
K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest...
, which is part of the Karakoram Range.
The mountains have profoundly shaped the cultures of South Asia; many Himalayan peaks are sacred in Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
, Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, and Sikhism
Sikhism
Sikhism is a monotheistic religion founded during the 15th century in the Punjab region, by Guru Nanak Dev and continued to progress with ten successive Sikh Gurus . It is the fifth-largest organized religion in the world and one of the fastest-growing...
. K2 is known as the Savage Mountain due to the difficulty of ascent, with the second highest fatality rate among those who attempt to climb it. For every four people who have reached the summit, one has died trying. Unlike Annapurna
Annapurna
Annapurna is a section of the Himalayas in north-central Nepal that includes Annapurna I, thirteen additional peaks over and 16 more over ....
, the mountain with the highest fatality rate, K2 has never been climbed in winter.
Sikkim
Sikkim is a landlocked Indian state nestled in the Himalayan mountains...
as a guest of Tashi Namgyal
Tashi Namgyal
Tashi Namgyal was the ruling Chogyal of Sikkim from 1914 to 1963...
, the ruling Chogyal
Chogyal
The Chogyal were the monarchs of the former kingdoms of Sikkim and Ladakh, which were ruled by separate branches of the Namgyal family. The Chogyal, or divine ruler, was the absolute potentate of Sikkim from 1642 to 1975, when its monarchy was abrogated and its people voted to make Sikkim India's...
(King) of Sikkim
Sikkim
Sikkim is a landlocked Indian state nestled in the Himalayan mountains...
and the royal family.
Namgyal was the 11th ruler of the Namgyal dynasty of Sikkim. He was born in Tibet and crowned by the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, he was a strong advocate for closer links with India. On his death in 1963, he was succeeded as Chogyal by his son Palden Thondup Namgyal
Palden Thondup Namgyal
Palden Thondup Namgyal was the 12th and last Chogyal of Sikkim.At six, Namgyal became a student at St. Joseph's Convent in Kalimpong, but had to terminate his studies due to attacks of malaria...
, with whom Hamilton maintained close ties. Legend has it that the Buddhist saint Guru Rinpoche visited Sikkim in the 9th century, introduced Buddhism and foretold the era of the monarchy. It was here, in Sikkim, where Hamilton was introduced to Buddhism. She maintained a close fondness for the country and its people, chosing to return every year for 30 years.
Of her expeditions over the years to K2 and Everest, she writes, "I often return to the 'Abode of the Snows' for it seems there my thoughts crystallize into forms that find their way into the movements, rhythms, pulsating in and out of my canvases."
During these years, Hamilton was exposed to and influenced by early Sienese
Siena
Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008...
and later Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
painting, especially Giotto
Giotto di Bondone
Giotto di Bondone , better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages...
's use of space that inspired her move toward abstraction. Hamilton lived in Florence with her paintings displayed in Rome, Venice, Milan, and Florence. While she would return to Maryland almost annually for visits and exhibitions of her work, she remained in Europe and ended up spending the rest of her career abroad.
Professional background
Stylistically, Hamilton passed through a number of stages. Her work evolved from realistic portraiture in the 1940s to pure abstractionAbstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
in the 1960s and thereafter. Having won the prize for portrait painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1945, it was natural that she went on to study in New York with Robert Brackman
Robert Brackman
Robert Brackman was an artist and teacher of Russian origin, best known for large figural works, portraits, and still lifes.-Biography:Born in Odes'ka Oblast, Ukraine, he emigrated from the Russian Empire in 1908....
, who is a master of realistic portraitures
Portrait painting
Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait...
and other figurative
Figurative art
Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork—particularly paintings and sculptures—which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational.-Definition:...
painting.
In the late 1940s to early 1950s, the influence of Diego Rivera is evident in the earthy textures and colors, as well as in the heavy, sculpted, quasi-cubist forms of her increasingly abstract paintings (see right). Meanwhile, the scale of her work increased, also as a result of her study with Rivera.
In the early 1950s there are other canvases that show nightmarish, contorted, bloody-looking images suggestive of slaughter, but unidentifiable bodies or body parts, somewhat in the manner of Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon (painter)
Francis Bacon , was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, austere, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. Bacon's painterly but abstract figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds...
. One painting shows a man with massive hands folded on his knees. Others, in a transitional stage of her work, are broken into planes, cubist-style. A painting from Mexico, which she says is the dead child of her maid, is a shadowy face, surrounded by leaves and swirls in deep shades of crimson.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Hamilton exhibited her paintings throughout Italy at the Venice Biennale, Rome, and Milan, as well as the Uffizi Gallery
Uffizi
The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...
in Florence. She also exhibited at the Pakistan Arts Council
Pakistan Arts Council
The Pakistan Arts Council is a government owned organization for promotion of the Arts in Pakistan....
in Karachi. Seven years later, she found herself drawn to the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
. In 1956 and again in 1958, Hamilton was an invited exhibitor at the Venice Biennale. During her extensive travels in the 1950s, she remained prominent in the Baltimore contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
scene, winning the Popular Prize in the Baltimore Museum of Art's Maryland Artists Exhibition in 1952 and again in 1959.
Hamilton had solo exhibitions of her work in major galleries and museums all over the world. The various cities that exhibited her work includes Rome; Milan; Turin, Italy; Florence, Italy; Mexico City; Osaka; Tokyo; and Karachi, Pakistan. She was featured in numerous multi-artist exhibitions in these cities as well as in Paris, the Whitney Museum in New York City, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC.
Around 1960, she took up a personal approach to action painting and it is for her paintings in this later, abstract expressionist
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...
manner that she is probably best known. She is sometimes classed as a lyrical abstractionist
Lyrical Abstraction
Lyrical Abstraction is either of two related but distinctly separate trends in Post-war Modernist painting, and a third definition is the usage as a descriptive term. It is a descriptive term characterizing a type of abstract painting related to Abstract Expressionism; in use since the 1940s...
. In 1968, she won first prize in the Biennale de Menton in France.
As Hamilton's presence in the art world continued to grow, visual art students looked to her for inspiration. Her influence extends across Europe and around the world. One individual in particular was a young Pakistani artist, named Ismail Gulgee
Ismail Gulgee
Ismail Gulgee - The Gulgeez Pride of Performance, Sitara-e-Imtiaz , Hilal-e-Imtiaz, was an award-winning, globally famous Pakistani artist born in Peshawar. He was a qualified engineer in the U.S. and self-taught abstract painter and portrait painter. Before 1959, as portraitist, he painted the...
(or Guljee, as it is sometimes spelled). Partha Mitter wrote of Hamilton's influence in her book, Indian Art
Indian art
Indian Art is the visual art produced on the Indian subcontinent from about the 3rd millennium BC to modern times. To viewers schooled in the Western tradition, Indian art may seem overly ornate and sensuous; appreciation of its refinement comes only gradually, as a rule. Voluptuous feeling is...
, published by the Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
. "Impressed by the visiting American painter Elaine Hamilton, Guljee enthusiastically plunged into action painting..." Jane Turner also wrote of Hamilton's influence on Gulgee in The Dictionary of Art. "In 1960, Ismail Gulgee, known for his portraiture, began experimenting with non-objective painting (in the manner of Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
) after working with visiting American artist, Elaine Hamilton."
According to David L. Craven, Distinquished Professor of Art History at the University of New Mexico
University of New Mexico
The University of New Mexico at Albuquerque is a public research university located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the United States. It is the state's flagship research institution...
, Hamilton became something of an ambassador in South Asia
South Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
: "Abstract expressionism was promoted as a universal style in Pakistan during the 1950s by a U.S. artist named Elaine Hamilton."
While Hamilton was living in France, she gained the professional admiration and support of Michel Tapié de Céleyran
Michel Tapié
Michel Tapié was an internationally active French critic, curator, and collector of art. He was an early and influential theorist and practitioner of "tachisme", which is generally regarded as the European equivalent of abstract expressionism...
, who was a highly influential French critic and respected painter. Tapié was an early advocate of European Abstraction Lyrique
Lyrical Abstraction
Lyrical Abstraction is either of two related but distinctly separate trends in Post-war Modernist painting, and a third definition is the usage as a descriptive term. It is a descriptive term characterizing a type of abstract painting related to Abstract Expressionism; in use since the 1940s...
, also known as tachisme
Tachisme
Tachisme is a French style of abstract painting popular in the 1940s and 1950s. It is often considered to be the European equivalent to abstract expressionism...
, which is generally regarded as the European equivalent of abstract expressionism. He was descended from an old, aristocratic French family; notably, he was the second cousin of the painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...
.
Tapié was a generous critic, championing the works of young and upcoming artists. He organized and curated scores of exhibitions of new and modern art in major cities all over the world. In 1952, Tapié was the curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
of Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
's solo exhibition in Paris, which took place at the Studio Paul Facchetti.
The French lyrical abstractionist or tachiste, Georges Mathieu
Georges Mathieu
Georges Mathieu is a French painter in the style of lyrical abstraction.-Biography:He was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, and gained an international reputation in the 1950s as a leading Abstract Expressionist. His large paintings are created very rapidly and impulsively...
was another artist of whom Tapié was an early champion. In 1952, Tapié curated Mathieu's exhibit at the Stable Gallery
Stable Gallery
The Stable Gallery, originally located on West 58th Street in New York, was founded in 1953 by Eleanor Ward. The Stable Gallery hosted early solo New York exhibitions for artists including Robert Indiana and Andy Warhol.-History:...
in New York. Mathieu studied literature and philosophy before switching to art at the age of twenty-one. After painting realistic landscapes and portraits, he developed a highly distinctive Abstract Expressionist personal style, which grew out of an emotionally driven, improvised and intuitive act of painting. He was often compared to Pollock and said of the artist, that he considered him to be the "greatest living American painter."
Tapié co-founded the International Center of Aesthetic Research in Turin, Italy in 1960, with architect Luigi Moretti
Luigi Moretti
Luigi Walter Moretti was an Italian architect.- Education and academic career :He was born in via Napoleone III, on the Esquiline Hill, in the same apartment where he lived almost his entire life...
. The Center was a facility for the study and exhibition of art, as well as for the publication and dissemination of critical, investigative, or theoretical works on art. The institution lasted until 1987, ending upon the death of Tapié.
In 1960, Hamilton created her first purely oil on canvas abstract painting, entitled Burst Beyond the Image, after an expedition to K2
K2
K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth, after Mount Everest...
in Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
. This painting was Hamilton's foray into the abstract world of action painting, which dramatically records the gestural
Gesture
A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of speech or together and in parallel with spoken words. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or other parts of the body...
action of painting itself. Today, the painting remains in Hamilton's personal collection.
In late 1960, full of inspiration after her most recent Himalayan adventure, upon her return to France, she quickly created many more of these huge "action" canvases in preparation for solo and group exhibitions in Japan. About this time, Hamilton caught the attention of Tapié and became the benefactor of his generosity when he exhibited her paintings at the Fujikawa Gallery in Osaka, Japan. The exhibit took place from April 12–18, 1961 and was presented in collaboration with the Gutai Group
Gutai group
The Gutai group was an artistic movement and association of artists founded by Jiro Yoshihara in Japan in 1954...
, which was an association of avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
artists representative of Japan's post-war art world. A second showing curated by Tapié was presented at the International Center of Aesthetic Research in Turin, Italy.
The 2006, Benezit Dictionary of Artists
Benezit Dictionary of Artists
The Benezit Dictionary of Artists is an extensive publication of bibliographical information on painters, sculptors, designers and engravers created primarily for art museums, auction houses, historians and dealers...
is emphatic in its praise, stating the following of Hamilton. "A globetrotter who has scaled the heights of the Himalayas, Hamilton makes profoundly serious work. Clearly part of the movement known as 'lyrical gestural abstraction', her painting is full of verve and invention and manifests an extraordinary gift for colour and substance."
Touring her home in 2009, Martha Thomas, writer with the Baltimore Magazine, was able to view Hamilton's many works within the artist's private collection. Rather than hanging on the walls, Hamilton's earlier paintings were found resting safely stacked against them.
Her work has been described as abstract expressionism and "action painting," but Hamilton says the Buddhist monks she knew in Tibet described it best: "It's meditation in action," she says. "That's not a contradiction. When you meditate, it doesn't mean empty. It's making space for things to come in."
Hamilton sustained and developed the abstract approach to painting for the rest of her life. Today, the majority of her work is in the collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art
Birmingham Museum of Art
Founded in 1951, the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama today has one of the finest collections in the Southeast US, with more than 24,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and decorative arts representing a numerous diverse cultures, including Asian, European, American,...
in Alabama. Her oil on canvas work entitled, Silent Space, which was completed c. 1969 is part of the collection belonging to Sarfaraz Aziz, who is the director of the brokerage firm of Aziz Fidahuesin & Company in London. Other pieces remain in public and private collections in Austria, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Pakistan, Switzerland and the United States.
Retirement years
In a November 2009 article written by Martha Thomas of the Baltimore Magazine, Hamilton shared her life stories and generously offered a tour of her home, personal collection of artwork, artifacts and souvenirs of a life well lived.Throughout her life, Hamilton called a variety of places "home." At one time while in France, she owned a 42-room chateau, filled with fine art and antiques. She eventually downsized to the warmth of a quaint French chateau with just 18 rooms.
Hamilton lived in apartments in Florence and New York, in a tent at the Mount Everest base camp, and when she was in Mexico City, she was housed by the Rotary Club
Rotary International
Rotary International is an organization of service clubs known as Rotary Clubs located all over the world. The stated purpose of the organization is to bring together business and professional leaders to provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and help...
of Houston, Texas
Houston, Texas
Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...
. After returning to America, Hamilton and her husband lived together in an historic, converted grist mill in Mountain Brook, southwest of Birmingham, Alabama.
In 2002, the couple decided to sell the Old Mill and move to Maryland, where they would live together after so many years. On the day after their 60th wedding anniversary, as the couple prepared to move, Bill went to the doctor to have his ears checked. Upon further examination, he was transferred to the hospital emergency room. He died of heart failure that day.
Hamilton continued on to Maryland, as planned, to live close to her family. She described her brothers as wonderful friends, and she also had strong bonds with her nieces and nephews. "I had always told them that if they ever wanted to run away, they could run to me," says the aunt. "I was far away, and safe." She also had space for guests. "Sometimes too much space," she laughed.
In 2009, Hamilton got by with just one guest room, decorated in shades of green: painted twin beds with tasseled silk spreads she had made in France, with olive green Tibetan rugs on the hardwood floors. The walls carefully held relief rubbings from tombs in Pakistan. Her travels are in the past. But evidence of a remarkable life is all around.
At the end of her life, Hamilton was content living in Granite
Granite, Maryland
Granite is an unincorporated community in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. Originally known as Waltersville, it was renamed Granite in recognition of its principal product...
, near her childhood home. To Hamilton, her eight-room home felt like a piece of France, scooped up and replanted in the Emerald Hill countryside. The home had a brick façade, with Palladian windows, and a gravel drive leading up to the front door. It was expansive with noble proportions and high, stepped tray ceilings that she designed herself in the wide, one-story "Chartreuse" style, common in southern France.
A tour of her three-year-old home is a testament to a lifetime of adventure. "It's filled with souvenirs," she said. "It's a vagabond's house." She emitted a hearty bit of laughter from her small frame, her eyes sparkled behind thick glasses.
Her Louis XV sofas dated back to the 18th century were adorned with hand-embroidered pillows from Pakistan. The Regency fireplace mantel—heavy marble carved in scrolls, which Hamilton shipped from France, displayed a bronze cat by the sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye
Antoine-Louis Barye
Antoine-Louis Barye was a French sculptor most famous for his work as an animalier, a sculptor of animals.-Biography:Born in Paris, Barye began his career as a goldsmith, like many sculptors of the Romantic Period...
, antique toys from India, and a pair of cloisonné
Cloisonné
Cloisonné is an ancient technique for decorating metalwork objects, in recent centuries using vitreous enamel, and in older periods also inlays of cut gemstones, glass, and other materials. The resulting objects can also be called cloisonné...
vases (exported from Tibet on the back of a yak). Her dining room furniture dates to the Renaissance, the table embellished with a pair of sturdy brass candlesticks from the same period, which she bought for $200 as an art student in Florence. "They are the real thing," she notes. "A lot of people have sat in front of those."
Everywhere, there are rugs, many of them brightly colored in traditional Tibetan motifs and thick knotted-wool patterns of dragons, tigers, and flowers. In addition to rugs, skins from leopards and tigers—with heads intact—are draped over seats along the wall and low tables in Hamilton's meditation room, a sanctuary off the library. The room is dominated by a gilded, wood altar, running from floor to ceiling, with nooks holding various representations of the Buddha. The walls are painted according to tradition: the deep earth red around the base, moving through horizontal bands of orange and gold representing various stages of clarity, and finally a blue ceiling, signifying nirvana. "I've had this identical room in every house I've owned for the last 40 years," Hamilton says. "Everything in Buddhism is symbolic and has definite meaning." She warns: "Don't use the word décor."
Whether or not they can be classified as décor, photographs seem to be a fundamental feature in Hamilton's effects. If the furniture, paintings, objets d'art—and even her sacred space—are not enough evidence of her adventures, there are plenty of photos to round out the story. There is a shot of her mother, a 1920s beauty with a feather boa-trimmed neckline and thick hair piled on her head; a photo of Hamilton making her way up an icy ledge in Pakistan's Karakoram range; and a picture of a Tibetan friend who is now a nurse in Pennsylvania thanks in part to Hamilton's largesse.
Hamilton rushes through each story, knowing that there are so many more to tell. Perhaps suspecting a visitor's disbelief—or in most cases, awe—she flutters her hands toward the library or her bedroom and says, "Oh, I have photos of all that," promising to provide proof that her wondrous tales really happened.
In the gallery, which she had constructed with high ceilings and recessed lighting to showcase her large canvases, Hamilton sifts through scrapbooks and locates a spread from the May 13, 1951 edition of The Baltimore Sun Magazine, its edges yellowed and brittle. Hamilton appears on the cover, swirling a voluminous cape with the headline, "Baltimore's Lady Bullfighter." She explains: "I saw the bullfights [in Mexico] and was traumatized. They gave me migraines." Her solution? "I had to find out what it was all about," so she trained to enter the ring.
At first, she explains, bullfighters swing the cape in wide circles, but "then begin to bring the bull closer and closer," shortening the span of the red cloth. She describes the contest as a mythic challenge between strength and intellect that "equalizes life and death." Hamilton notes that she did not actually kill the bull, but she did emerge from the encounter sore and covered with bruises. "You don't even realize you're getting grazed at the time," she says, "but you come out all black and blue."
Returning to her scrapbook, she points out a program from a 1951 solo show at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and a magazine photo of her standing on scaffolding in Mexico City, working on a 47-foot mural she painted at the art institute in San Miguel de Allende, after assisting the muralist Diego Rivera.
On Monday, March 15, 2010, Elaine Hamilton O'Neal died in Woodstock, Maryland due to unknown causes. She stopped painting around 2004, due to eye problems, but otherwise remained in good health. In her latter years, she was involved in her community, through her membership in the Great Patapsco Community Association, as well as the local art museum. She was a regular supporter of Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, where her brother Douglas serves as Vice-President of the 2009-2010 Board of Trustees. The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland is one of the finest small privately-formed art collections open to the public in the United States.
Solo Exhibitions
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Multiple-Artist Exhibitions
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Awards
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External links
- Elaine Hamilton, "Sans titre," oil on canvas, 1960, signed
- Elaine Hamilton, Abstract Figure, oil on canvas, signed "Hamilton" lr, 34 1/4 x 78 in., framed.
- Historic Old Shades Creek Mill House in Mountain Brook, Alabama
- Maryland ArtSource Artist's Profile. Includes several color images of Hamilton's artwork.
- Auction record, May 2006, Paris, includes a color image
- Brookes University (UK) 2004 symposium, "1956: Legacies of Political Change", featuring paper by R. Araeen entitled "The Cold War, Abstract Expressionism and the Presence of the American Artist, Elaine Hamilton, at the Time of the CIA’s Supported Military Coup in Pakistan in 1957
- Artist file on Elaine Hamilton at the Smithsonian American Art Museum