“Creating is a process; it should be done out of joy,” said artist Rita Blitt Hyperallergic in a recent video interview from her part-time studio space in Berkeley, California.
With a dynamic practice spanning nine full decades and mediums that include painting, drawing, film, and sculpture, the Abstract Expressionist artist has certainly learned more than just a thing or two about forging a comprehensive body of work. Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, where she spends her time when not in California with her daughter, Blitt has dedicated her life to being an artist. Her thousands of works include large-scale public sculptures permanently installed in her hometown and as far away as Singapore and Australia; short films and documentaries in which her art practice merges with music and dance; and emotional paintings in museum collections and private institutions around the world, including the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, the National Museum of Singapore, the Nevada Museum of Art, the Spencer Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Mulvane Art Museum at Washburn University.
Much of Blitt’s art is inspired by her family members, including her granddaughter and late husband, the natural environment and the work of longtime collaborators such as choreographer David Parsons and composer Michael Udow. But her greatest and longest-lasting influence is dance, which has been fundamental to her artistic identity since she was a child, when she used her fingers to draw poetic figures on frosted glass windows, filling “every bit of white space” she could find. imaginative illustrations. To this day, her art-making process is full of movement and sweeping gestures made with her arms and body, similar to that of a conductor leading an orchestra.
At the Mulvane Art Museum, which owns more than 2,000 of Blitt’s works and has dedicated a gallery space in her name, several of her pieces are currently on display in the exhibition Women of abstract expressionismthrough February. The exhibition places her lifelong art practice in dialogue with that of the mid-20th century Abstract Expressionist artists Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner and Joan Mitchell, perhaps household names in post-war art history in the United States.
“I’ve known Rita for a while and spent a lot of time with her work, but every time I watch it I learn something new or experience something new, so it’s been a bit of a journey,” Connie Gibbons, director of the Mulvane Art Museum, curator Women of abstract expressionismtold Hyperallergic.
Gibbons explained that she had read Mary Gabriel’s 2018 book Ninth Street Womenwho delves into the works of Krasner, de Kooning, Mitchell, Frankenthaler and Grace Hartigan, female painters whose contributions have historically been overshadowed by those of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg and other male artists.
The curator saw similarities between their practices and those of Blitt, who as a Midwestern artist “did something similar…often isolated” from the vibrant community of New York City.
Now in her 90s, Blitt is still creating work and finding inspiration every day. Her latest paintings, with a mix of colors and flowing shapes on canvas, relive her lifelong love of trees.
“Someone once said that a work of art is not finished until it has been viewed by others,” Blitt said Hyperallergic. “Maybe that’s true, but sometimes it’s hard to share everything. People say, ‘Oh, [art] it should look like this, or it should look like this.” But I want them to know that it’s about the joy of creating and the courage to listen to their inner being.”
