Tania
The artist Tania, who adopted the mononym in 1958 after working under a number of married names through the 1940s and early '50s, created art in a wide range of mediums (painting, sculpture, works on paper, and collage), but is perhaps most well known for her wall murals. In particular, she is recognized for a highly visible monumental wall painting from 1970 that stretches 13 stories along the side of a Greenwich Village high rise. Not only exemplary of Tania’s typical abstract style, the work also represents her interest in public art. In 1966, Tania co-founded the non-profit City Walls, Inc., and although it operates today as the Public Art Fund, the organization continues to commission artists to enliven urban space with new art, just as Tania envisioned.
While Tania’s early work exhibits traces of Pop art, by 1967 she had fully developed her geometric, hard-edge style. Tania experimented heavily with compositions of “overlapped triangles,” both in two-dimensional paintings and in three-dimensional aluminum sculptures. For Tania, these works fundamentally relate to architecture. Rendering her paintings on the floor, Tania conceived of them as “rooftops seen from the air,” or a sort of urban version of The Spiral Jetty, Robert Smithson’s …
The artist Tania, who adopted the mononym in 1958 after working under a number of married names through the 1940s and early '50s, created art in a wide range of mediums (painting, sculpture, works on paper, and collage), but is perhaps most well known for her wall murals. In particular, she is recognized for a highly visible monumental wall painting from 1970 that stretches 13 stories along the side of a Greenwich Village high rise. Not only exemplary of Tania’s typical abstract style, the work also represents her interest in public art. In 1966, Tania co-founded the non-profit City Walls, Inc., and although it operates today as the Public Art Fund, the organization continues to commission artists to enliven urban space with new art, just as Tania envisioned.
While Tania’s early work exhibits traces of Pop art, by 1967 she had fully developed her geometric, hard-edge style. Tania experimented heavily with compositions of “overlapped triangles,” both in two-dimensional paintings and in three-dimensional aluminum sculptures. For Tania, these works fundamentally relate to architecture. Rendering her paintings on the floor, Tania conceived of them as “rooftops seen from the air,” or a sort of urban version of The Spiral Jetty, Robert Smithson’s celebrated work of land art.
Albright College, Reading, PA
Barnard College, New York
Kingsborough Community College, Brooklyn, NY
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Morgan State College, Baltimore, MD
New York University, New York, NY
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, CUNY, Flushing, NY
