Untitled (Hands), 1990

Louisa Chase  

Louisa Chase, American (1951 - 2016)

1973 B.F.A. Syracuse University
1975 M.F.A. Yale University School of Art

Abstractionist painter/printmaker Louisa L. Chase was born in 1951 in Panama City, Panama and now (2002) lives in Sag Harbor, New York. Her paintings, primarily oil, feature sparse, dark, Expressionist calligraphic scribbles often overlaying and contrasting with the geometry of isolated rectangles in primary colors, as if to comment upon the opposing natures of these differing forms.

Chase earned a B.F.A. degree in 1973 from Syracuse University, New York, and an M.F.A. degree in 1975 from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. She taught painting from 1975 to 1979 at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, and in 1980 to 1982 in New York City at the School for Visual Arts. She received grants in 1978-79 and 1982-83 from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1979-80 from the New York council on the Arts Creative Artists Public Service

Chase has exhibited, in one-person and group shows, at the Robert Miller Gallery, New York City (1981-82, 1984, 1986); Galerie Inge Baker, Cologne, Germany (1983); Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles, California (1985); Whitney Museum of American Art (1985); Metropolitan Museum of Art (1988), Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (1989).

Louisa Chase's work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and New York Public Library in New York City; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; University of Massachusetts, Worcester; Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; and Denver Art Museum, Colorado.

Chase lived in Sag Harbor, New York. She died on May 8, 2016 in East Hampton, New York, at the age of 65.