“I am concerned with geometric systems, ratio, color interaction, visual ambiguities, scale, archetypes. My ideas come from organic structures, crystallography, physics, gestalt psychology and from games, patterns, puzzles and sunsets at the end of Pine Street.” -Edna Andrade, 1976
Locks Gallery is pleased to present Edna Andrade: Symmetries,an exhibition that brings together a number of major paintings spanning over 30 thirty years of her career. The exhibition will run from February 3rd through March 18th, with a reception and panel discussion on February 3rd. In addition to her paintings, there will also be a display of prints in the 3rd Floor Gallery. This exhibit celebrates the artist’s centennial year. In honor of Andrade’s legacy, and Philadelphia’s vibrant creative community, artist and activist Sarah McEneaney along with Harry Philbrick, Founder and Director of Philadelphia Contemporary, and Susan Talbott, Director of the Fabric Workshop and Museum will speak at the gallery to discuss What Does it Take? How to Make Philadelphia a Vital and Happening City for the Arts.
Renowned for her challenging optical and hard-edged abstract paintings, Edna Andrade (1917-2008) lived and worked in Philadelphia beginning from the time she was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Throughout her distinguished teaching career as a mentor and leader, the artist made a long-lasting impact on the Philadelphia art scene. Long inspired by innovative thought and approaches in science and engineering, she applied that outlook to the perceptive stimulation and geometric precision in her own work. Andrade carried forth a similar progressive stance in her political causes she supported, such as the Civil Rights Movement, Women, and Gay Liberation. She came of age, nurtured by Philadelphia institutions and envisioned supporting their future vitality in contemporary art through funding from her estate.
Edna Andrade’s work has been collected in numerous museums and institutions throughout the U.S. including the Addison Gallery of American Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Delaware Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, The Whitney Museum, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
A comprehensive monograph was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2015. The book includes over 170 illustrations of paintings, sketches and photographs; scholarly essays and chronology.
