Erlebacher, Martha Mayer


Martha Mayer Erlebacher was born on November 21, 1937 in Jersey City, New Jersey. In 1961, she married sculptor Walter Erlebacher. She received her MFA from Pratt Institute in 1963. Since her graduation, she has become a major figure in contemporary representational art.
She has had an extensive teaching career at some of Philadelphia’s and New York City’s premier art schools, including the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pratt Institute, Parsons School of Design, and the New York Academy of Art. Among other prestigious honors and awards, she was awarded a Senior Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1982. As a leading American Realist painter, Erlebacher has shown extensively in many principal galleries in New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia throughout the past four decades. She has also been included in numerous museum exhibitions across the nation, surveying such subjects as figurative art, American women artists, and the Philadelphia art scene. In addition to being included in many prestigious private collections, her work is also featured in over a dozen national museums, including such institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, among others.