Edna Andrade

American artist Edna Andrade is best known for her contributions to the Op Art movement in the 1950s, a movement which involved confronting the viewer with the nature of perception by painting illusions or optical effects to imply movement, vibrating patterns, or warping. Andrade’s abstract, geometric oil paintings prioritized aesthetic experimentation over storytelling or emotional provocation. Perhaps the work most exemplary of her style, Motion 4-64 is a 48 inch square oil painting that features black and white rectangles that seem to bend inward at the edges, creating a sense within the viewer that they are being pulled into the center of the canvas. 

There have been two major retrospectives of Andrade’s work, one at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1993 and one in 2003 at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Andrade taught at Tulane University in New Orleans, and The University of the Arts in Philadelphia.