About the Artist
Jennifer Bartlett
Jennifer Bartlett (1941- ) is an American artist known for paintings and prints that combine the system-based aesthetic of Conceptual art with the painterly approach of Neo-expressionism. Many of her pieces are executed on small, square, enamel-coated steel plates that are combined in grid formations to create very large works. Early in her career she realized that she wanted something to draw on that was erasable but gridded, like the graph paper that she and many other Conceptual artists were using at the time. She came up with what is now one of her signature materials: foot-square steel plates with a plain white baked enamel surface on which was silkscreened a quarter-inch grid. She had these fabricated in large quantities, and later worked with other sizes as well. Most critics see Bartlett's work as inventive, energetic, wide-ranging, and ambitious, and she has been called one of the two best painters of the Postminimalism generation.
