Ryan, Anne (1889–1954)

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Ryan, Anne (1889–1954)

American artist. Born on July 20, 1889, in Hoboken, New Jersey; died on April 18, 1954, in Morristown, New Jersey; only daughter and oldest of four children of John Ryan (a banker) and Elizabeth (Soran) Ryan; graduated from the Academy of St. Elizabeth's Convent, in Convent Station, New Jersey; attended St. Elizabeth's College; married William J. McFadden (a lawyer), in 1911 (separated 1923); children: (twins) William and Elizabeth McFadden; Thomas McFadden.

Finding her metier at the age of 50, Anne Ryan enjoyed a short but intense art career, first painting and then creating the abstract collages of paper and fabric for which she became known. Hilton Kramer found unusual intimacy in Ryan's small creations, noting that her work has "the air of a private communication, of something confided with affection and delicacy."

Anne Ryan was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1889, the only daughter and eldest of four children of John Ryan and Elizabeth Soran Ryan , wealthy Irish-Catholics. Both parents died when she was still a child, and she and her brothers were raised by their grandmother. After completing preparatory school at the Academy of St. Elizabeth's Convent, Ryan briefly attended St. Elizabeth's College, leaving in 1911 to marry William J. McFadden, then a young law student. The couple had three children: twins, William and Elizabeth (1912), and Thomas (1919).

The marriage did not endure, failing in part because of Ryan's desire to move beyond a life of domesticity. Following a legal separation in 1923, Ryan resumed her maiden name and moved to New York City's Greenwich Village, where she wrote poetry (Lost Hills was published in 1925) and worked on a novel. From 1931 to 1933, she lived on the island of Majorca, writing poetry, stories, and articles, some of which were published in The Literary Digest and Commonweal. During the summer of 1932, she visited Paris with her older children.

Returning to Greenwich Village in 1933, Ryan moved in with her younger son and continued to write; for a brief time, she also ran a restaurant to make ends meet. At age 50, perhaps inspired by the vibrant, young artistic community around her (friends included Hans Hofmann and Tony Smith), she discovered painting and had her first solo exhibition of oil paintings in 1941. That same year, she joined British surrealist Stanley Hayter's Atelier 17 to study printmaking. There, influenced by Hayter's abstract work, she produced a number of woodblock prints and engravings.

The turning point in Ryan's artistic career was her exposure to an exhibit of collages by the German master Kurt Schwitters at the Rose Fried Gallery in 1948. Inspired, Ryan began to experiment in the new medium, at first using "found objects," such as postage stamps, ticket stubs, candy wrappers, and fragments of pictures to create her collages. Soon, she became more individualistic in her selection of materials, choosing textiles with distinctive weaves and textures, and a variety of fine papers, including some specially handmade by Douglas Howell. Many of these materials she allowed to age or "ripen" in order to produce a "faded or worn quality." The resulting works have been described variously as "lyrical" and "otherworldly." Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein writes: "Their calm spiritual quality stems from her early contact with the Catholic mystics and her familiarity with the poetry of Rainier Maria Rilke and Gerard Manley Hopkins, among others." Poet John Ashbery compared Ryan's compositions to the work of Charles Ives, John Cage, and Marianne Moore , noting that her art goes "beyond 'mysteries of construction' … into mysteries of being which, it turns out, have their own laws of construction." The first public showing of Ryan's collages was at the Betty Parson's Gallery in 1950. The following year, her work was included in the exhibition "Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America" at the Museum of Modern Art.

Ryan spent her last years living with her daughter Elizabeth McFadden in Greenwich Village. After suffering a stroke in 1954, she moved in with her son in Morristown, New Jersey, where she died on April 18, just shy of her 65th birthday. In 1974, a major exhibition, "Anne Ryan Collages," was held at the Brooklyn Museum, sparking renewed interest and appreciation in the artist.

sources:

Bailey, Brooke. The Remarkable Lives of 100 Women Artists. Holbrook, MA: Bob Adams, 1994.

Rubinstein, Charlotte Streifer. American Women Artists. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1982.

Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Green, eds. Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980.