TRUITT, Anne (Dean) 1921-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born March 16, 1921, in Baltimore, MD; died of complications following abdominal surgery December 23, 2004, in Washington, DC. Artist and author. Truitt was a well-known sculptor who published several popular journals about her life. Initially interested in psychology, she earned a B.A. in that field from Bryn Mawr College in 1943. Finding a job at Massachusetts General Hospital, she soon learned that being a therapist was not what she enjoyed doing. She therefore decided to pursue another interest, art, by taking sculpting classes at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Washington, D.C. Graduating in 1949, she produced sculptures of a more traditional variety for a time before discovering her own style after viewing a number of minimalist-style paintings. Truitt began experimenting with various arrangements of painted wood, developing a style that emphasized vertical compositions. The minimalist school was emerging at this time—the 1960s—and Truitt was often associated with these artists, although a number of art critics pointed out that she did not use the industrial materials that most minimalists used, nor were her compositions as simplified. Truitt, who was also a professor at the University of Maryland until 1991, began keeping a journal of her artistic and personal life in the 1970s as a way of dealing with some of the pressures she was experiencing. She later collected and published her entries in three books: Daybook: The Journal of an Artist (1982), Turn: The Journal of an Artist (1986), and Prospect: The Journal of an Artist (1996).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, December 30, 2004, p. B9.

New York Times, December 27, 2004, p. A19.