Mary Heilmann, Who Revivified Abstract Painting, Dies at 86

Andrew Russeth | Artnet | 17th September 2026

After training in California and a brief foray into ceramics, Heilmann moved to New York intent on “making it big” in sculpture. She didn’t, and in 1969 took up the supposedly dying medium of painting. Her “proudly unpolished” abstractions poked fun at the serious geometries of minimalism while radiating a “joyful humanity”. She continued to “uncork strange delights” until institutional recognition finally arrived in her late-60s.  Heilmann had “one of the defining art practices of her era”.