Bartlett, Jennifer

Jennifer Bartlett is a painter whose process-oriented works have defined her distinct and shifting style. After earning an MFA at Yale University, Bartlett moved to New York and soon became part of the artistic conversation of the late 60s and 70s. Influenced by Sol Lewitt’s, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art”, Bartlett’s early work was fastidious and geometric, with abstract subject matter and unpredictable color palette. Over her 50 year career, Bartlett’s work has transformed in size, technique, and subject matter.

Bartlett’s systematic process is the foundation of her practice. The mystery of her non-romanticized subject matter, such as houses, statues, and strangely familiar landscapes, invite the viewer into an elusive narrative. At times busy and hectic, and others calm and meditative, Bartlett consistently refers to the grid, as with the delicate weaves in her recent body of work, Amagansett.
Bartlett received her B.A. from Mills College in Oakland, California in 1963, her B.F.A. from Yale University School of Art and Architecture in 1964, and her M.F.A from Yale University School of Art and Architecture in 1965. Her work resides within public collections throughout the world, such as, the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tokyo; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art; Seibu Corporation, Tokyo; The Tate Gallery, London; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.