AMY SILLMAN

In addition to her painting practice, Sillman also produces zines and iPad animations, and writes on the work of other artists.

Early Years

Born in Detroit in 1955, Sillman’s early life included formative work experiences at an Alaska cannery and a feminist silkscreen factory in Chicago. She initially attended Beloit College, Wisconsin, graduating in 1973, before moving to New York to train as a Japanese translator at New York University. Sillman soon turned to art, earning a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1979. She later completed her MFA at Bard College in 1995, supported by the Elaine de Kooning Memorial Fellowship. Sillman is based in New York and has taught at Bard College and Frankfurt’s Städelschule (2014–2019).

Amy Sillman Artworks

Amy Sillman’s contemporary art practice is defined by a critical and playful approach to painting, drawing, and animation. Her works are highly process-based, often created in layers and revised over time, and are known for their energetic colour, gestural mark-making, and the fluid relationship between abstraction and figuration.

Early Works and ‘Williamsburg Portraits’

Sillman’s early ‘Williamsburg Portraits’ (1991–1992) capture the downtown arts community of New York and reveal the cartoonish, figurative underpinnings of her later semi-abstract works. These paintings established her interest in the body, character, and the social context of art-making.

Process, Improvisation, and the Subversion of Abstraction

Her practice is rooted in improvisation and revision, often revising paintings over time to explore new visual possibilities. Sillman’s paintings and drawings are ‘intensely physical’, deploying a vibrant visual language of bright colours, gestural movements, and frequent scraping, erasing, and over-painting. Works such as Me & Ugly Mountain (2003) and The Elephant in the Room (2006) typify her subversion of male-dominated abstraction, using humour, pathos, and allusion to explore themes of isolation, sexuality, and the absurd.

Seriality, Animation, and Expanded Practice

From the mid-2000s, Sillman’s paintings began to hint at figurative forms beneath abstract surfaces. Her series ‘Dubstamp’ (2018), featured in Landline (Camden Arts Centre, London, 2019), presented paintings suspended in a line, each formally related to the next. Sillman also produces zines, essays, and animations, including Thirteen Possible Futures: Cartoon for a Painting (2012), a hand-drawn iPad animation that explores the directions a painting might have taken. Her multidisciplinary approach extends to curatorial projects, such as Artist’s Choice: Amy Sillman—The Shape of Shape at MoMA, New York (2019).

Public Commissions

No major public commissions are documented for Amy Sillman.

Awards, Accolades and Auctions

• Berlin Prize in Arts and Letters, American Academy in Berlin (2009)
• Guggenheim Fellowship (2014)
• American Academy in Rome Residency (2014)
• Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award
• Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship
• Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship

Sillman is a highly influential figure in contemporary art, achieving record auction prices, including $855,000 for U (2008), which placed her among the most expensive living female painters at the time.

Exhibitions

Amy Sillman has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions at important institutions. Below is a selection of important exhibitions.

Solo Exhibitions

• Landline, Camden Arts Centre, London (2018)
• After Metamorphoses, The Drawing Center, New York; Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo (2017)
• one lump or two, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2013)
• Amy Sillman: Third Person Singular, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. (2008)

Group Exhibitions

• Affinities for Abstraction: Women Artists on Eastern Long Island, 1950–2020, Parrish Art Museum, New York (2021)
• I’m a Believer: Pop Art and Contemporary Art from the Lenbachhaus and KiCo Foundation, Lenbachhaus, Munich (2018)
• America Is Hard to See, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015)
• The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014)
• Blues for Smoke, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2012)
• Oranges and Sardines, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2008)
• Current Undercurrents: Working in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York (1997)

Sillman has also guest-curated exhibitions such as Artist’s Choice: Amy Sillman—The Shape of Shape, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019), and Score!, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College (2014).

Website

Amy Sillman’s website can be found here.

Amy Sillman FAQs

Ocula | 2025