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Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt
An expansive collection of texts providing insight into the inner life, creativity, and practice of the innovative American artist Anne Truitt
Spanning more than fifty years, this comprehensive volume collects the letters, journal entries, interviews, lectures, reviews, and remembrances of the groundbreaking twentieth-century artist Anne Truitt (1921–2004). Alexandra Truitt, the artist’s daughter and a leading expert on her work, has carefully selected these writings, most of which are previously unpublished, from the artist’s papers at Bryn Mawr College as well as private holdings.
Revelations about the artist’s life abound. Among Truitt’s earliest writings are excerpts from journals written more than a decade before her first artistic breakthrough, in which she establishes themes that would occupy her for decades. In later texts she shares uncommon insights into the practices of other artists and writers, both predecessors and peers. Like Truitt’s published journals, these writings offer a compelling narrative of her development as an artist and efforts to find her voice as a writer. They show that Truitt’s creative impulse to translate the inner workings of her mind into a symbolic language, so important to understanding her sculpture, predates her art.
Spanning more than fifty years, this comprehensive volume collects the letters, journal entries, interviews, lectures, reviews, and remembrances of the groundbreaking twentieth-century artist Anne Truitt (1921–2004). Alexandra Truitt, the artist’s daughter and a leading expert on her work, has carefully selected these writings, most of which are previously unpublished, from the artist’s papers at Bryn Mawr College as well as private holdings.
Revelations about the artist’s life abound. Among Truitt’s earliest writings are excerpts from journals written more than a decade before her first artistic breakthrough, in which she establishes themes that would occupy her for decades. In later texts she shares uncommon insights into the practices of other artists and writers, both predecessors and peers. Like Truitt’s published journals, these writings offer a compelling narrative of her development as an artist and efforts to find her voice as a writer. They show that Truitt’s creative impulse to translate the inner workings of her mind into a symbolic language, so important to understanding her sculpture, predates her art.
416 pages, Paperback
Published April 18, 2023
About the author
Anne Truitt
22 books49 followersThe artist Anne Truitt was born in Baltimore in 1921 and spent her childhood in Easton. She lived in a house on South Street, just a block from the Academy Art Museum. She travelled extensively before eventually settling in Washington, DC. Her paintings and sculpture are noted for their simple linear qualities and investigation of color relationships.
Critics have often associated her with both Minimalism and the Washington Color Field artists, although like many artists she rejected reductive classifications. She had a successful career showing her work extensively in New York City and across the country.
Along with her art Truitt was noted as a teacher and as an author of memoirs: Daybook (1982), Turn (1986), and Prospect (1996). She died in Washington in 2004.
Critics have often associated her with both Minimalism and the Washington Color Field artists, although like many artists she rejected reductive classifications. She had a successful career showing her work extensively in New York City and across the country.
Along with her art Truitt was noted as a teacher and as an author of memoirs: Daybook (1982), Turn (1986), and Prospect (1996). She died in Washington in 2004.
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January 25, 2024
wonderful and varied selection of writings about being an american, midcentury artist outside of nyc, and outside of academia
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