Masterpiece Story: Summer Street by Grace Hartigan

Grace Hartigan (1922–2008) was one of the most original painters of postwar America. Though often placed among the Abstract Expressionists, she never fit neatly into any single category. Her art was both emotional and structured, both expressive and grounded in the real world.

Two dominant trends defined Abstract Expressionism:

• Color field painting, where artists like Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler spread soft, glowing veils of color to evoke pure emotion.
• Action painting, practiced by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, full of energy, drips, and movement.

Hartigan borrowed something from each, but her voice was distinct. Her paintings often contain recognizable forms—faces, streets, fruit, or figures—that float between the abstract and the figurative.

Her influences were many: Henri Matisse—for his joyous use of color and flat space; Willem de Kooning—for his lively, tangled brushwork; Jackson Pollock—for his sense of motion and daring; and her poet friends—especially Frank O’Hara, who encouraged her to paint life as she lived it—vibrant, fast, and full of feeling.

Unlike other women of her generation, such as Joan Mitchell or Lee Krasner, Hartigan mixed abstraction with imagery drawn from daily life—city streets, magazines, and myth. She believed emotion and observation could coexist.

Summer Street—A City in Motion

Painted in 1956, Summer Street seems to shimmer and move before your eyes. Large strokes of green, coral, yellow, blue, and orange collide and overlap. The paint feels alive, almost musical. Hartigan doesn’t describe a scene in a traditional way—she suggests it.

As you look closer, shapes begin to appear. In the lower half of the canvas, a seated woman with blue sunglasses becomes visible. Her legs blend into the round forms of a bicycle’s wheels, so figure and object become one. Around her, color fields vibrate like reflections on hot pavement.

A Flat World Full of Depth

There is no real three-dimensional space in Summer Street. Hartigan doesn’t use perspective or shadow. Instead, every part of the surface competes for attention—like sounds in a busy street. We recognize shapes only because our brains find patterns: the curve of a circle becomes a wheel; a pink area becomes skin. But these things are not outlined or modeled—they are built from color and rhythm.

This is what makes the painting so exciting: it feels alive but unconfined. The foreground and background blend together. The city, the bicycle, the figure, and even the watermelon exist in the same energetic plane.

Color and Balance—A Modern Matisse

Hartigan’s color choices show her love of Matisse. The reds and greens, blues and oranges, balance perfectly but still vibrate with tension. There are no outlines, color itself builds the form. Warm hues (peach, coral, yellow) are paired with cool tones (blue, teal, emerald) to create a sense of light and motion. The result is balanced yet unpredictable, just like the city in summer, full of noise and surprise. Hartigan varies her brushstrokes constantly: thick impasto beside thin washes, quick dashes next to calm slabs of paint. This variation keeps the viewer’s eye moving, adding texture and energy.

The Spirit of Summer Street

By 1956, Hartigan was gaining recognition but still pushing against boundaries. Summer Street shows her confidence—and her rebellion. The artist refused to choose between abstraction and representation, between emotion and structure. Instead, she painted the world as she felt it: crowded, bright, human, alive.

Today, Summer Street feels timeless. It reminds us that painting doesn’t need clear lines or perspective to tell a story. It can speak through color, motion, and intuition—the same way we experience the world when we walk through a sunlit street on a hot summer afternoon.