Greene, Gertrude Glass (1904–1956)

American painter and sculptor . Born Gertrude Glass in Brooklyn, New York, in 1904; died in 1956; attended the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, New York; married Balcomb Greene, in 1926; no children.

Described as a free spirit, Gertrude Glass was born in 1904 and grew up in Brooklyn; she studied art at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School in New York City. When she was 22, she married painter Balcomb Greene and for the next five years traveled in Europe with her husband exploring the new art movements. In 1931, they returned to New York where Gertrude set up a studio. For the next 15 years, she sculpted in abstract, non-representative forms. Paula Charmonte deemed her "a link between 1930s constructivism in Paris and post World War II abstraction in New York." Greene was also active in bringing together other experimental artists and helped organize the American Abstract Artists Association, the Artists Union, and the Sculptors Guild.

One of her non-representative forms was wood reliefs, wall-hung sculptures that were pieced together from carefully shaped, sometimes painted, wood forms. These works, which include Construction in Blue (1935), Construction in Grey (1939), and White Anxiety (1943–44), may have been influenced by the Cubism movement which the artist encountered in Europe. Later, Greene created abstract sculptured painting, using a palette knife to give them a textured, dimensional look. Gertrude Greene's promising career was cut short by her death in 1956, age 52.

sources:

Bailey, Brooke. The Remarkable Lives of 100 Women Artists. Holbrook, MA; Bob Adams, 1994.

Charmonte, Paula. Women Artists in the U.S., 1750–1986. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1990.