Selected Chronology

Truitt, Anne; Truitt, Alexandra

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Selected Chronology

Anne Truitt, Alexandra Truitt (Editor)

Always Reaching: The Selected Writings of Anne Truitt

Selected Chronology

Author

Anne Truitt, Alexandra Truitt (Editor)

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31900

Selected Chronology

1877

Truitt’s father, Duncan Witt Dean, is born on September 28. The youngest of six children, he will grow up in St. Louis, Missouri. The Dean family was originally from the Boston, Massachusetts, area. Major John Pulling (1737–1787), an ancestor, held one of the two lanterns in the Old North Church in Boston, signaling the British invasion to Paul Revere. Major Pulling later avoided capture by the British by hiding in a half-full barrel of potatoes.

1887

Truitt’s mother, Louisa Folsom Williams, is born on September 11 to an established Boston family, whose investments are primarily in the publishing, textile, and shipping industries. Louisa’s grandfather, Alexander Williams II, was a publisher and a founder of Boston’s Old Corner Bookstore, a meeting place for Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Henry David Thoreau. Louisa will graduate from Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1909, following in the footsteps of her mother, Anna Louise Palmer, who in 1879 was in the first graduating class of Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.

Truitt’s first American ancestor on her mother’s side, Robert Williams, was born circa 1598 and immigrated to Boston in 1634. He was one of the first men to protect his family against smallpox. Another ancestor, Captain Robert Pearce Williams (b. 1753), served in the Continental Army throughout the Revolution, and was later shipwrecked near Arabia, where he drank pond water to stay alive. Although he was presumed dead by his family back in Boston, he had been captured by nomadic Bedouin, who kept him as a translator until freeing him five years later. As a child, Truitt will recall reading the letter he wrote to his wife upon his release.

1920

After meeting in 1916 in Havana, Cuba, where Duncan Dean was employed by the United Fruit Company, Truitt’s parents meet again on the front lines of wartime France. Duncan is stationed as a stretcher-bearer with the US Army’s 42nd Division, and Louisa serves as a Red Cross nurse. They marry at Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan and move to the town of Easton on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

1921

The artist is born Anne Dean in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 16. She will live in Easton until the age of thirteen.

1922

Truitt’s twin sisters, Louise and Harriet, are born in Easton on October 20.

1931

Truitt enters fifth grade. The artist’s nearsightedness is discovered when she is unable to read the blackboard.

That summer, the Dean family travels to England, visiting Westminster Abbey, where Truitt is impressed by the construction of the church, tombs, and memorials.

1933

Truitt’s mother is diagnosed with neurasthenia and spends the winter in a Baltimore hospital. With her mother hospitalized and her father also unwell, Truitt is obliged to manage the household.

1934

Truitt and her sisters are sent to live on her maternal Aunt Nancy and Uncle Jim Barr’s farm outside Charlottesville, Virginia. Truitt attends St. Anne’s Convent School in Charlottesville for one year. Jim’s brother is historian and author Stringfellow Barr, who will co-found the Great Books program at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1937.

1935

Early in the year, Duncan Dean undergoes voluntary treatment for alcoholism at Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, a facility that advocates a progressive program of occupational therapy, exercise, and diet. Louisa Dean joins her husband at Highland, playing tennis with Zelda Fitzgerald, a fellow patient, as part of their physical therapy.

The Dean sisters move from Charlottesville to Asheville. Truitt is enrolled at St. Genevieve of the Pines, where she learns French and begins to write poetry.

1938

Entering Bryn Mawr College at age seventeen, Truitt is a year younger than most of her fellow students. In November, she almost dies from peritonitis brought on by a ruptured appendix. She is required to leave Bryn Mawr College to recuperate for the rest of the year.

1939

As part of her physical recovery, Truitt takes a rehabilitative exercise course at Highland Hospital during the summer. This firsthand experience with progressive treatments furthers her nascent interest in psychology.

Truitt resumes her freshman year in the fall. Among the subjects that Truitt studies are Greek literature in translation, Renaissance and modern art, philosophy, psychology as taught by Désiré Veltman, and creative writing as taught by Edith Finch, who would later marry Bertrand Russell.

1941

Louisa Dean dies on October 27.

1943–44

Truitt graduates cum laude with a BA in psychology from Bryn Mawr College. She returns for the summer to her father’s house in Asheville, where she works as a Red Cross nurse’s aide.

Truitt is admitted to Yale University to pursue her doctorate in psychology, but she declines to attend, realizing that she prefers to work directly with people. She joins her sisters in the Boston/Cambridge area and begins a job at Massachusetts General Hospital in the psychiatric lab. She takes a second job at night as a nurse’s aide in the same hospital: “The more I observed the range of human existence — and I was steeped in pain during those war years when we had combat fatigue patients in the psychiatric laboratory by day and I had anguished patients under my hands by night — the less convinced I became that I wished to restrict my own range to the perpetuation of what psychologists would call ‘normal.’ . . . I honestly do not believe that I would be an artist now if I had not been first a nurse’s aide.”1Anne Truitt, Daybook: The Journal of an Artist (New York: Pantheon, 1982), 65–66.

Truitt continues to write poetry and short stories.

1944–45

Truitt and several friends enroll in a course on sculptural modeling with Franz Denghausen at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

One of Truitt’s friends in the course and a fellow boarder at her rooming house is Doris Bry, who will later become Georgia O’Keeffe’s assistant and representative. Bry introduces the artist to James McConnell Truitt in 1945. Born in Chicago, Illinois, on June 17, 1921, James grew up in Baltimore and was named after his mother’s brother, James Rogers McConnell, a fighter pilot who was killed in action in 1917 while serving in the Lafayette Escadrille in France before the United States entered World War I. His father, Ralph Truitt, was a prominent psychiatrist, active in the mental hygiene movement and an advocate for the rehabilitation of the criminally insane. James Truitt graduated summa cum laude in English from the University of Virginia in 1943. He served as a lieutenant in the US Navy in the Pacific during World War II.

1946

In the spring, Truitt becomes aware of the limitations of her role in professional psychology during a psychiatric testing session with a patient. She leaves her position as a psychiatric assistant but continues her job as a nurse’s aide.

1947

The artist marries James Truitt on September 19 in Washington, DC, where he works for the US Department of State.

1948

Truitt accompanies her husband to New York when he leaves the Department of State to work as a journalist for LIFE. While in New York, she works administering psychological tests. James Truitt is transferred back to Washington, DC, in September. From February 1948 to October 1949, Truitt keeps a journal that chronicles her growing frustration with the limitations of narrative writing and her increasing interest in the visual arts as a means of expression.2Although Truitt wrote in Daybook that she “abandoned writing for sculpture in 1948,” 43, Truitt’s journal from the time indicates that she continued to pursue both writing and art-making simultaneously until well into 1949. See “Journal Excerpts, 1948–49” in this volume.

1949

On February 8, Truitt begins attending the Institute of Contemporary Art in Washington, DC, where she studies sculpture with Alexander Giampietro.

~

Description: Anne Truitt, Dallas, Texas by Unknown

Anne Truitt, Dallas, Texas, 1950. © annetruitt.org/Bridgeman Images.

1950

The Truitts move to Dallas, Texas, when James Truitt becomes chief of the LIFE bureau there. Truitt studies for several months at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts (now the Dallas Museum of Art) with Octavio Medellín, who teaches her an additive process for building life-size clay forms that are buttressed in order to be freestanding — a process that will influence her later work.

The Truitts travel to Mexico, visiting various archeological sites including Teotihuacán and Tula. Her encounters with ancient Mesoamerican architecture will influence the form and sensibility of artworks made shortly thereafter.

They also spend time in Ajijic, near Lake Chapala, where she becomes acquainted with a community of writers and artists, among them anthropologist Tobias Schneebaum, who will remain a lifelong friend.

1951

The Truitts move to New York in January when James Truitt is named chief of LIFE correspondents for the United States. Truitt studies life drawing with Peter Lipman-Wulf and learns to carve wood. She sees the work of David Smith, Louise Nevelson, and Jackson Pollock, as well as pieces by Pierre Bonnard, Constantin Brancusi, Alberto Giacometti, and Piet Mondrian.

When James Truitt is made the Washington bureau chief of LIFE in October, the couple return to Washington, DC.

1952

Truitt uses a small coach house in Georgetown as a studio. During the years she spends at this studio, Truitt will work in many different ways: building figures, including life-size torsos, out of colored cement, clay, and Sculpmetal, as well as carving stone. She also begins to layer and solder wire into geometric constructions, painting some sections.

The artist is involved with the Institute of Contemporary Art. The Institute will invite a range of speakers whom the Truitts entertain in their Georgetown home, including Truman Capote, Marcel Duchamp, Naum Gabo, Bernard Leach, Alberto Moravia, Isamu Noguchi, Sir Herbert Read, Hans Richter, D. T. Suzuki, Rufino Tamayo, and Dylan Thomas.

1953

Truitt co-translates Germaine Brée’s book Du Temps perdu au temps retrouvé: Introduction à l’oeuvre de Marcel Proust (Marcel Proust and Deliverance from Time) from French.

1954

Truitt’s work is included in an exhibition of Washington artists at the National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington, DC, in February, where juror David Smith awards Truitt’s sculpture Elvira third prize.

New York gallery owner André Emmerich tries to acquire one of Truitt’s sculpted heads after seeing it at an exhibition of area artists at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland in April, but it has already been sold.

James Truitt moves from LIFE to Time magazine.

1955

Truitt gives birth to a daughter, Alexandra, on December 2.

1956

Truitt begins teaching studio art part-time at the Mount Vernon Seminary in Washington, DC.

1957

Truitt’s father, Duncan Dean, dies on January 5.

The family moves to San Francisco, California, where James Truitt is made bureau chief for all Time publications. They build a house in Belvedere, California, with a room for the artist to use as a studio. Here, she makes clay constructions reminiscent of the forms of Mexican archeological sites.

1958

Truitt’s second child, Mary, is born on March 27.

1959

By 1959, the family has moved to San Francisco’s Divisadero Street. A room on the third floor serves as Truitt’s studio, where she makes drawings in black, brown, and pink ink on newsprint. Truitt socializes with artists and writers, including Anthony Caro, Richard Diebenkorn, Clement Greenberg, Louisa Jenkins, and David Sylvester. The Truitts also take frequent trips to Big Sur, where they own land on Partington Ridge, and spend time with archeologist Giles Healey, who was the first non-Maya to see and photograph the Maya site of Bonampak in 1946.

1960

The Truitts return to Washington, DC, in July when James Truitt accepts a position as assistant to Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post; by 1963, he will have been appointed vice president of that company and publisher of ARTnews, which at that time is owned by the Washington Post Company. The couple is part of a lively social circle of journalists, artists, politicians, and government officials, based largely in Georgetown. At a dinner party at Mary Pinchot Meyer’s house, the artist meets David Smith. He will become a friend and an important source of information about making a life as a sculptor.

Samuel (Sam), Truitt’s third child, is born on November 12.

1961

On a visit to New York in November, Truitt views the work of Ad Reinhardt, Barnett Newman, and Nassos Daphnis for the first time, in the Guggenheim’s “American Abstract Expressionists and Imagists” exhibition. She will later observe that this encounter exposed her to the conceptual possibilities of art.

1962

Truitt rents a carriage house at Twining Court near DuPont Circle in Washington, DC. There she makes or initiates at least thirty-five sculptures and a number of works on paper over the course of the year.3Records kept by the artist account for thirty-five works dating to 1962, including an unpainted panel, while Truitt recalled making thirty-seven works in Daybook, 153.

André Emmerich and curator William Rubin separately visit Truitt’s studio. Emmerich offers, and Truitt accepts, a solo exhibition early the following year.

~

Description: New England Legacy by Truitt, Anne

New England Legacy, 1963. Acrylic on wood, 82¼ × 72¼ × 14⅞ in. (208.9 × 183.5 × 37.8 cm).

1963

Truitt’s first solo exhibition at André Emmerich Gallery4From 1963 to 2004 Truitt is represented by and regularly exhibits at André Emmerich Gallery. in New York opens February 12. Donald Judd, whose work will become closely affiliated with the emerging Minimalist aesthetic but will not be the subject of a solo exhibition until December 1963, briefly reviews Truitt’s show for the April edition of Arts Magazine, observing that “The work looks serious without being so.”5Donald Judd, “In the Galleries: Anne Truitt,” Arts Magazine, April 1963, 61; James Meyer, Minimalism (London: Phaidon, 2000), 194. Michael Fried also mentions the show in a review for Art International.

1964

Truitt’s work is included in the group exhibition “Black, White and Grey,” organized by Samuel Wagstaff for the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut.

James Truitt accepts a position as Far East Bureau Chief for Newsweek in Japan. The family moves to Tokyo in March, remaining there until 1967.

Taking over a temporary studio that had been previously occupied by Jasper Johns before moving into a more permanent space, Truitt will make twenty-three sculptures and more than one hundred and fifty drawings in nine distinct categories while in Japan.

Truitt develops a friendship with American sculptor and performance artist James Lee Byars, who is living in Kyoto, and whose work has also been included in “Black, White and Grey.”

The Minami Gallery in Tokyo organizes a solo show of Truitt’s sculpture that opens October 19.

1965

Truitt returns to New York briefly for the February opening of her second solo exhibition at André Emmerich Gallery.

1966

Truitt’s work is included in “Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculpture” at the Jewish Museum in New York, organized by Kynaston McShine. During an overseas trip to Washington, DC, in the spring, Truitt meets curator Walter Hopps.

1967

Truitt’s second solo show at Minami Gallery, Tokyo, runs from February through March. It is the first time the artist exhibits drawings and paintings with surfaces achieved by applying paint with rollers rather than brushes.

Truitt’s work is included in the exhibition “American Sculpture of the Sixties,” organized by Maurice Tuchman and on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania. Clement Greenberg mentions Truitt in his essay “Recentness of Sculpture,” which is included the exhibition catalogue. Michael Fried references the artist’s work in his article “Art and Objecthood,” which appears in the June issue of Artforum.

The Truitt family returns to Washington, DC, in June when James Truitt becomes a general correspondent for Newsweek and the first editor of the Washington Post’s Style section.

Truitt is invited by her friend V. V. Rankine to co-teach an art class at the Madeira School, a boarding school for girls in McLean, Virginia. Truitt incorporates art history into studio art instruction and will continue to teach at Madeira until 1972.

1968

By January, Truitt is working from a studio in the basement of the family’s home on Tilden Street in Washington, DC. Truitt has returned to the columnar format that she had started exploring before moving to Japan. She also begins to sand surfaces to obtain more subtle color.

Clement Greenberg writes an article on Truitt, accompanied by photographs by Lord Snowdon, for Vogue’s May issue focusing on “The American Woman.” The article’s publication precedes the artist’s solo exhibition at André Emmerich Gallery in October. She is also included in the “1968 Annual Exhibition: Contemporary American Sculpture” at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

1969

The Truitts separate in February, although their divorce will not become official until March 1971. Truitt takes primary custody and financial responsibility for all three children. In May, she buys a house in the Cleveland Park area of Washington, DC, where she will live for the rest of her life.

1970

In April, Truitt receives a Guggenheim Fellowship; she uses the funds to build a studio. Her work is included in the “1970 Annual Exhibition: Contemporary American Sculpture” at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

1971

Following the completion of her studio, Truitt returns to making large-scale sculptures. She receives a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her first solo exhibition at Ramon Osuna’s Pyramid Gallery in Washington, DC, opens in April.

1972

Truitt receives a fellowship award from the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Truitt has made paintings on linen as early as 1969, and now, returning to painting, she makes works on canvas.

1973

Continuing to investigate the possibilities of working on canvas, Truitt begins a numbered series of graphite-and-white acrylic paintings, which she will later title Arundel.

The Whitney Museum of American Art mounts a retrospective of Truitt’s sculpture and drawings, primarily organized by Walter Hopps, from December to January 1974.

1974

On April 21, an expanded version of Walter Hopps’s retrospective of Truitt’s sculptures and drawings opens at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. On a trip to Arizona in June, Truitt begins the journal that will later become Daybook.

On the recommendation of artist Helen Frankenthaler, Truitt is invited to Yaddo, an artist’s residency program in Saratoga Springs, New York, for the first time. She will return to Yaddo throughout her life, working on sculptures, drawings, and the manuscripts for all four of her books.

1975

Truitt exhibits the Arundel paintings in “White Paintings” at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The exhibition, organized by Renato Danese and John Gossage, opens January 21. A public debate develops, with some visitors and a vocal art critic writing for one of Baltimore’s newspapers labeling Truitt’s paintings overly conceptual.

In March, Truitt spends two weeks in residence on Ossabaw Island, Georgia, and comes to realize that her journal begun in June 1974 might become a viable manuscript (Daybook will be published in 1982). She visits Yaddo for another residency.

Truitt teaches a class at the Corcoran School of Art and Design during the fall semester and also begins as a part-time lecturer at the University of Maryland, College Park, in September. During her years at the University of Maryland, she will teach advanced drawing classes, integrating art history into studio courses. Early on in her time at the university, Truitt will also develop an innovative graduate seminar, combining art theory, art history, and literature.

~

Description: First Requiem by Truitt, Anne

First Requiem, 1977. Acrylic on wood, 90 × 8 × 8 in. (228.6 × 20.3 × 20.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Gift of Robert B. and Mercedes H. Eichholz, 1205.2013

~

First Requiem, alternate view, 1977. Acrylic on wood, 90 × 8 × 8 in. (228.6 × 20.3 × 20.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Gift of Robert B. and Mercedes H. Eichholz, 1205.2013

1977

Truitt is awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

1980

Truitt is promoted to tenured full professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.

1981

Truitt serves as an Australian Arts Fellow in Sydney for the month of June.

In September, while at Yaddo, she writes her forward for Daybook.

On November 17, James Truitt commits suicide at his home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

1982

Truitt begins writing the journal that will become her second book, Turn. Pantheon Books publishes Truitt’s first book, Daybook: The Journal of an Artist, on October 12.

1983

After discovering salary inequities between herself and a male colleague at the University of Maryland, College Park, Truitt initiates litigation against the university, hoping that this action might establish greater pay equity for other female professors. In early September, faced with the financial drain of a prolonged court case, Truitt drops the lawsuit.

1984

The artist begins a year-long sabbatical from the University of Maryland, College Park. She takes a trip to Paris, France; Asolo, Italy; and London, England, which she will write about in Turn. Truitt serves as acting executive director of Yaddo from April 1 to December 31.

1985

In October, Truitt is invited to Lincoln, Nebraska, to give a series of talks on Willa Cather as well as her own work at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and the Lincoln City Library. Truitt visits Yaddo from December 13 to 23 and completes final revisions of Turn.

1986

Viking Penguin Books publishes Truitt’s second book, Turn: The Journal of an Artist.

1987

Truitt donates her papers to Bryn Mawr, her alma mater.

1989

Truitt and photographer John Dolan set out from Boston, Massachusetts, to drive across Canadian Route 1 to Vancouver, British Columbia, and then to Seattle, Washington.

1991

Truitt is made a professor emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park, although she will continue to teach for another five years. She also teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art during the fall.

Drawing upon journals begun two weeks before her retrospective and kept during her 1989 trip across Canada, Truitt works on her third book, Prospect, while in residence at Yaddo from December 18 to January 5, 1992.

1992

“Anne Truitt: A Life in Art,” a retrospective of Truitt’s work organized by Brenda Richardson, is held at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

1995

Truitt submits the final manuscript of Prospect.

1996

In October, Scribner publishes Prospect: The Journal of an Artist. After the fall semester, Truitt retires from teaching at the University of Maryland, College Park.

1998

Truitt’s first solo show at Danese Gallery in Manhattan opens February 10. The Academy of Arts (now Academy Art Museum) in Easton, Maryland, exhibits a selection of Truitt’s sculpture and works on paper.

1999

Truitt is in residence at Yaddo from October to November. During this residency, filmmaker Jem Cohen records an interview with the artist, along with footage of her working in her studio, which will become the short film Anne Truitt, Working, 2009.6Anne Truitt: Working, directed by Jem Cohen, 16mm film, 13 minutes (Brooklyn, NY: Gravity Hill Films, 2009).

2000

Truitt teaches at the Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico, during the month of October.

2001

During her residency at Yaddo, from September to October, Truitt works on the Piths, a numerically titled series of individual canvas works painted in black acrylic on both sides. She will continue working on this series for the next three years.

James Meyer’s book Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties discusses Truitt’s sculpture in relation to Minimalist aesthetics and theory.

Truitt begins the journals that will become the manuscript for her final book, Yield: The Journal of an Artist, the fourth volume of Truitt’s memoirs.

2003

The University of Nebraska awards Truitt the Cather Medal for service to humanity. A selection of Truitt’s sculptures is exhibited at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery in Lincoln, Nebraska. Truitt delivers a lecture in Red Cloud at the invitation of the Willa Cather Foundation.

From October 1 to November 2, Truitt is in residence at Yaddo, where she makes two series of works on paper, titled Sound and Waterleaf.

~

Description: Studio view of Parva LXXII by Cohen, Jem

2004

“Anne Truitt: Early Drawings and Sculpture 1958–1963,” organized by James Meyer and Margaret Schufeldt, opens at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Truitt’s work is included in “A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958–1968,” organized by Ann Goldstein for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California.

She completes several sculptures, and finishes the Pith series of paintings on canvas.

Anne Truitt dies in Washington, DC, on December 23, leaving one unfinished sculpture.

1 Anne Truitt, Daybook: The Journal of an Artist (New York: Pantheon, 1982), 65–66. »

2 Although Truitt wrote in Daybook that she “abandoned writing for sculpture in 1948,” 43, Truitt’s journal from the time indicates that she continued to pursue both writing and art-making simultaneously until well into 1949. See “Journal Excerpts, 1948–49” in this volume. »

3 Records kept by the artist account for thirty-five works dating to 1962, including an unpainted panel, while Truitt recalled making thirty-seven works in Daybook, 153. »

4 From 1963 to 2004 Truitt is represented by and regularly exhibits at André Emmerich Gallery. »

5 Donald Judd, “In the Galleries: Anne Truitt,” Arts Magazine, April 1963, 61; James Meyer, Minimalism (London: Phaidon, 2000), 194. »

6 Anne Truitt: Working, directed by Jem Cohen, 16mm film, 13 minutes (Brooklyn, NY: Gravity Hill Films, 2009). »

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