1000 Museums

(1914- August 7, 2004)

Lillian Orlowski was an American artist born and raised in New York City. She was an early adopter of the Modernist style in the 30s. While employed as a WPA artist, Orlowski learned that Hans Hofmann, a noted Modernist painter, was operating a school in Provincetown. Orlowski claims that studying under Hofmann opened her eyes to new ways of painting. She during this time she said, \”I no longer saw painting as an imitation of nature, but instead as an attempt to interpret nature on the picture plane.\” Orlowski quickly became one of Hofmann\’s star pupils adopting his methods but always maintaining her personal vision. It was in Provincetown that Orlowski met her husband, fellow artist William Freed with whom she would spend over forty years working and living in Massachusetts. Her work uses active and broad brushstrokes to create exuberant plays on the more stolid and masculine examples of abstraction coming to prominence at the time. Her attention to color was keen and she was unafraid to embrace light pastels and bright colors.