12 Facts About Mary Heilmann

Mary Heilmann is an American painter based in New York City and Bridgehampton, NY.

In 1959 Mary Heilmann started at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Mary Heilmann moved to New York City after graduating from Berkeley in 1968.

Mary Heilmann was excluded from a number of shows from that era, with 1969's Anti-Illusion at the Whitney Museum of American Art being particularly crushing.

Mary Heilmann's work was included in the 1971 exhibition Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists held at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and the 2022 exhibition 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone at the Aldrich.

From 1976 until 1981 Mary Heilmann was a regular in exhibitions at New York's influential Holly Solomon Gallery, with two solo shows there during that time.

In 1977 Mary Heilmann moved to the neighborhood that is known as TriBeCa, having previously lived in SoHo and Chinatown.

Mary Heilmann returned to New York in 1979, the same year she finished Save the Last Dance for Me, a painting that would go onto symbolize a break between the work she made before 1979 and the more mature work she produced after.

However, Mary Heilmann's return coincided with what she felt was a sort of painting in exile.

Mary Heilmann has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and an Anonymous Was a Woman award in 2006.

In 2016 a retrospective of Mary Heilmann's work was held at the Whitechapel Gallery in London.

Mary Heilmann's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.