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= Edna Andrade =

Edna Andrade (January 25, 1917 Portsmouth, Virginia - April 17, 2008 Philadelphia) was an American abstract artist. She was an Op artist.

Op Art
The Op Art movement refers to painting and sculpture that uses illusions or optical effects (MOMA terms). Op art includes graphic elements and use of color that similarly appears in works from Post-Impressionists, Futurists, Constructivists, and Dadaists (MOMA terms). Famous Op artists include Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, François Morellet, and Josef Albers.

The Op Art movement refers to paintings and sculpture that uses illusions or optical effects. https://www.moma.org/collection/details.php?theme_id=10139/ref> Op art includes graphic elements and use of color that similarly appears in works from Post Impressionists, Futurists, Contructivists, and Dadaists https://www.moma.org/collection/details.php?theme_id=10139/ref>. Famous Op artists include Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, François Morellet, and Josef Albers.

Early life and Education
Edna Davis Wright was born on January 25, 1917 in Portsmouth, Virginia. From the age of eight, she was inclined to the visual arts and was encouraged to practice drawing and painting (Interview). Between 1935-1836 Andrade studied at the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania (cite wiki). In 1937 she attained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1938 she completed Postgraduate studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA).

While at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Andrade was awarded two Cresson Traveling Scholarships. While traveling post World War II, Andrade encountered the Bauhaus movement and other examples of German modernism (Locks biography). The artistic experimentation happening in Europe influences Andrade’s approach to design, color, and abstraction.

In 1941 Andrade married architect, Preston Andrade and they soon moved to Philadelphia in 1946, where she would remain for the rest of her life. (cite)

Career
After her studies, Andrade taught art at an elementary school in Norfolk, Virginia. Subsequently, she taught at Tulane University in New Orleans. Upon her move to Philadelphia, she began teaching at The University of the Arts, where she taught for thirty years. In her early career she drafted on a freelance basis, but didn’t take charge of her career until her marriage ended (an op art original).

Andrade’s early work includes water color collages and ink drawing of abstracted landscapes (an outpouring of art). During World War II, she worked on propaganda materials for what is now the CIA (op art original). Over the course of her career she created public artwork, commissioned by the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Salvation Army (Locks Bio).

Beginning in the 1950s, Andrade began painting highly abstract, geometric paintings that employed limited color palettes and a variety of shapes (CITE). Her work is held in numerous collections in the U.S., including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Dallas Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Baltimore Arts Museum. Her personal writings, correspondence, and photographs are held at the Archives of American Art.

Style
As a part of the Op art movement, Andrade’s style confronts the nature of perception, creating highly abstracted, geometric images. Her oil paintings possess illusionistic qualities, hence “optical art.” As Andrade began creating illusionistic art, she shifted from organic abstraction to hard-edge geometry, emphasizing symmetrical squares and color juxtapositions (cool waves source).

Andrade’s style of painting often produces hallucinatory compositions, psychedelic in appearance and often as if they are moving. Her paintings have no narrative, nor subject matter, which situate Andrade as an abstract artist. In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Andrade comments on her paintings, stating, “It’s not like showing your emotion. It’s a decision to be totally visual. A story doesn’t go with it.” (Inquirer) As demonstrated by Andrade and her paintings, they are complex visual experiences, based in aesthetic experimentation rather than storytelling.

Her style is best exhibited in her most famous painting, Motion 4-64. Motion 4-64 is a 48 inch square oil on canvas of black and white rectangles. The edges bend inward, pulling the viewer into the center of the canvas, creating an illusionary experience (TAG Edna Andrade at ICA and Locks). She implements curvilinear lines to create an illusionistic space, in which the audience visually experience movement within the geometric, flowing design. Other paintings such as Turbo I, from 1965, integrate the science of perception into the viewer's experience by using lines and circular movements to create aesthetically engaging canvasses.

In her later work, Andrade returns to painting abstracted landscapes and practices the more fundamental art techniques she learned while at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Locks bio)

Influences
Andrade listed artists who particularly influenced her style including Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, and Josef Albers as influences on her work (preexisting). Andrade also notes that she was influenced by architectural design, philosophy, mathematics, and design (Locks bio). She was specifically inspired by things such as astrophysics and Freudian psychology, which can be seen in the complexity and detail of her paintings. (TAG→ a an outpouring of art).

Death
Andrade died on April 17, 2008 at the age of 91 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she remained for her entire career.

Recognition
In 1991 Andrade received Philadelphia’s Mayor’s Arts and Culture Award for Visual Arts. (TAG Locks, optical paintings) and In 1996 she received the Distinguished Teaching Award from the College Art Association.

Legacy
In 1997, the Leeway Foundation established the Edna Andrade Emerging Artist Award to encourage and assist female artists in their artistic careers. (TAG Locks, optical paintings) In 2013, the Edna Andrade Summer Scholarship was established at the University of Pennsylvania, which funds students research travels.

There are have been two major retrospectives of Andrade’s work, one in her lifetime and one after her death. The first was held in 1993 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the second in 2003 at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania.

Andrade’s artwork was more popular toward the end of her career and after her death. Although she is considered an influential Op artist, she was left out of the New York art scene due to her location in Philadelphia.