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Burst Beyond the Image, by Elaine Hamilton, 1960. Oil on canvas. 50 x 80 in. Collection of the Artist.
Copyright
Untitled, by Elaine Hamilton, c. 1962. Oil on canvas. c. 72 x 54 in. Owned by the Center of Aesthetic Research, Turin, Italy.
Copyright
Silent Space, by Elaine Hamilton, c. 1969. Oil on canvas. c. 54 x 72 in. Collection of Safaraz Aziz, London.
Copyright
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Medium/Discipline: Painting
Birthplace: Catonsville, Maryland
Maryland Affiliation: Born here, Active while in residence
Prominent Theme: Abstraction; Non-Objective; Action Painting; Portraiture
Gender: Female
Race/Ethnicity: White
Biography: Born in Maryland and trained as an artist at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Elaine Hamilton O'Neal's work has evolved from realistic portraiture in the 1940s to pure abstraction in the 1960s and thereafter. At the Institute, she won the portrait prize and after she graduated in 1945, she received an Institute Fellowship Scholarship award for 1946, which provided her studio space. Hamilton received acclaim at Maryland-area institutions, such as the Baltimore Museum of Art where a one-person exhibition of her work was displayed in 1951, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and the Peale Museum in Baltimore. She was a member of the Art Students League of New York from 1946 to 1948 and studied with Robert Brackman, an American figurative painter who taught at the League in the 1930s and 40s. Throughout these years, her work was largely figural with some genre subjects depicted, but they show her experimentation with cubism and a growing interest in abstraction and the depiction of subjective themes such as dreams and exploration of inner visions.
A turning point in Hamilton's artistic career took place when she had the opportunity to study mural techniques in Mexico at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City, where she was exposed to the work of the Mayans and Aztecs through two one and a half month long expeditions to the temples in Chiapas, as well as to the outdoor murals of David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, with whom she worked as an artist's assistant. Of her travels to the Mayan and Aztec ruins and her later excursions, Hamilton draws a correlation between the stoic adventure of painting and of travel to remote places: "For me, rough nature was my bohème," she says. Throughout the Mexican period of her artmaking, she explored the concept of the vital life force, the mask and the self, and Eve's emergence into being from the rib of Adam. Hamilton's experience in Mexican mural painting influenced the large scale of her painting, which is endemic to her work throughout her career thereafter.
Another turning point in Hamilton's work resulted from a prestigious Fulbright painting scholarship award that sent her to Italy in 1952; the award was extended through 1953 and she chose to remain in Italy until 1959. During these years, Hamilton was exposed to and influenced by early Sienese and later Renaissance painting, especially Giotto's use of space that inspired her move toward abstraction. Hamilton lived in Florence with her paintings displayed in Rome, Venice, Milan and Florence, returning to Maryland almost annually for visits and exhibitions of her work.
Driven by a desire for spiritual and creative renewal, Hamilton embarked on a series of expeditions to the Himalayas in 1959; Hamilton sought this renewal, in the artist's words, "where the earth and sky meet." For three decades, Hamilton traveled throughout India, Pakistan, the former kingdom of Sikkim (annexed by India in 1975) and Japan. In Pakistan in 1959, she was asked to produce work for an exhibition that was administered by the foreign minister of Pakistan. The ministries of Pakistan also gave her permission to make her own K-2 expedition. This expedition resulted in the welcome realization of her individual artistic vision and the creation of her first completely abstract work, Burst Beyond the Image. During this time, she began to confirm that she was on a Buddhist path. Of her expeditions over the years to K-2 and Everest, she writes, "I often return to the 'Abode of the Snows' for it seems there my thoughts crystallize into forms that find their way into the movements, rhythms, pulsating in and out of my canvases." (Tapié, Elaine Hamilton: Edizione del Dioscuro, 1969, n.p.)
Hamilton returned from the Middle East to Italy. In 1960, she went to Japan where she was invited to create work for two exhibitions. She returned to Paris, France in 1962 and lived there for seven years. In 1965, curator Michel Tapié drafted a manifesto called "Le Baroque Généralisé" regarding the future of abstraction, with Elaine Hamilton among the artists working in the new "Baroque" style he posited. In 1971, Hamilton purchased a chateau in France where she lived and worked for 30 years in a style she relates to that of the Action Painters of the post-World War II era in the United States. From 1952 on, she also maintained a residence in Birmingham, Alabama with her husband. In the Spring of 2001, she returned to her hometown of Catonsville where she currently resides.
Elaine Hamilton's work is represented in the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama and in public and private collections in Austria, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Pakistan, Switzerland and the United States.
Education/Training: Maryland Institute College of Art, 1941-1945
Art Students League, New York, NY, 1946-8
National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico City, 1950-51
Accademia de Belli Arte, Florence, Italy, 1952-53
Selected References: Baltimore Sun, "A Bow to the Mayans in Pants" 1-28-1951, p. A-3
Elaine Hamilton: Paintings, (Tokyo, Japan: Minami Gallery), March 27-April 6, 1961.
Qadir, Manzur, with an introduction by A.K. Brohi. Elaine Hamilton: Exhibition of Paintings (Karachi, Pakistan: The Arts Council of Pakistan, printed by Din Muhammadi Press), April 24-May 5, 1960.
Tapié, Michel. Elaine Hamilton: Edizione del Dioscuro (Torino, Italy: International Center of Aesthetic Research), 1969.
Tapié, Michel. Elaine Hamilton: Exhibition of Paintings (Osaka, Japan: Fujikawa Gallery), April 12-18, 1961.
Single-Artist Exhibitions: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1951
Instituto Allende, Mexico, 1952
Galleria De Arte Moderno, Mexico City, 1952
Galleria San Marco, Rome, Italy, 1954
Marticks Gallery, Baltimore, 1955
Galleria "l'Il Milione", Milan, 1958
Invited Artist, Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan, 1960
Fujikawa Gallery, Osaka, Japan, 1961
Minami Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, 1961
Center of Aesthetic Research, Turin, Italy, 1967
Gallery 31, Birmingham, Alabama, 1968
Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia, 1968
Multiple-Artist Exhibitions: The Baltimore Museum of Art Exhibitions, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952
Corcoran Bi-Annual Exhibition, Washington, DC, 1951
Baltimore Artists Exhibition, Peale Museum, 1951-52
A.C.A. Gallery of New York, 1951-52
Fulbright Artists Exhibition, Rome, 1954
International Exhibition, Uffizzi Gallery, Florence, Italy, 1955
Invited Artist, Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition, 1956
Invited Artist, Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition, 1958
Invited Artist Fulbright Painters, Whitney Museum of New York, 1959
Invited Artist, 10th Gutai Exhibition, Osaka, Japan, 1961
Invited Artist, "Priz Marzotto" Exhibition, 1964
Invited Artist, Salon de Mai, xxiII, Paris, France, 1966
Espaces Abstraits Exhibition, Stadler's Gallery, Paris, France, 1967
First Prize, Biennale de Menton, France, 1968
Three-man show - Centre de Services d'Information et de Relations Culturelles de l'Ambassade des Etats-Unis à Paris, 1969
American Cultural Center of Paris, 1969
Awards: Portrait Prize, Maryland Institute, 1945
Post-Graduate Fellowship Scholarship Award from the Maryland Institute, 1946
First Prize Peale Museum, 1951
Popular Prize Award from The Baltimore Museum of Art Exhibition, 1952
Mural Commission for the Instituto Allende, Mexico, 1952
Fulbright Award in Painting to Italy, 1951
Popular Prize, Maryland Artists Exhibition, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1959
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