Edna Andrade

Locks Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of important paintings and works on paper by the celebrated Philadelphia artist Edna Andrade. The exhibition will span both floors of the gallery and be on view from September 15th to October 15th. Focusing on works from 1962 to 1990 the show will highlight optical paintings and geometric abstraction.

Andrade’s work from the early 1960s demonstrates her early interest in hard edge painting and the Op Art movement. During this period her remarkable precision, use of line, and bright colors became central to her practice. From the 1970s to 1980s Andrade's pensive, optical paintings progressed towards studies of pattern-making. After a journey to India, her spatial abstractions related to architecture, which is where her foundation in drawing was cemented. 

Andrade graduated from the collaborative degree program of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania in 1937 and would later become a celebrated professor at the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts) where she influenced generations of students. She provided a brilliant example of the expressive and creative potential to be found in an unapologetic exploration of the formal properties that comprise a work of art.

Since 1971, Edna Andrade has been represented exclusively by Locks Gallery. She has been featured in over twenty five one-artist exhibitions and has received numerous awards including the College Art Association Award for Distinguished Teaching of Art (1996), and the Honor Award for Achievement in the Visual Arts from the National Women’s Caucus for Art (1983). In 2002, Andrade was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania, awarded by Governor Mark Schweiker. Her work is included in the collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Houston Museum of Fine Arts; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Princeton University Art Museum; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA.