Jane freilicher
A Brooklyn native, Jane Freilicher’s parents, Martin Niederhoffer, a linguist, and Berthe, a pianist, were immigrants from Eastern Europe. Freilicher (1924–2014) graduated from Brooklyn College and received a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Teachers College in 1948. She went on to study with Hans Hofmann, both in New York and in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In 1952, she had her first solo exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery.
Pursuing a distinctive painterly realism for over 60 years, Jane Freilicher has gained increasing recognition from critics, collectors, and generations of younger painters. Early in her career, she adopted the tenets of Abstract Expressionism, as well as painting from observation, but subsequently concentrated mainly on landscape and still lifes.
Freilicher came of age at the center of a group of influential artists and poets associated with Abstract Expressionism, including painters Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell, Larry Rivers, Fairfield Porter, and Alex Katz. Her work is widely collected and is represented in major museum collections throughout the United States, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, all in New York City. Her paintings were included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial. She was a longtime member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Academy of Design, both in New York City.
