Background
Denise Green was born in 1946 in Melbourne, Australia, and grew up in Brisbane.
Denise Green was born in 1946 in Melbourne, Australia, and grew up in Brisbane.
Green left Australia in 1966 to live and study in Europe. She studied in Paris at the College de France but dropped out, the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts Supérieure but did not finish, and the Sorbonne, as well did not finish. After living in Paris for three years, Green left Europe to study at New York City’s Hunter College under Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell.
In the 1970s, Green spent time traveling in India.
Denise Green was first recognized for her paintings at the Whitney Museum of American Art's exhibition New Image Painting in 1978. Her earlier works are predominantly cityscapes, such as "Laight St., View No. 1" (1975).
During the mid- to late-1970s, her work became more abstracted as her focus shifted to the portrayal of centralized objects isolated in space. In the 1980s, her work became even more abstracted with works like "Summer Heat" (1981).
The early 1990s marked another shift in her style with an exhibition in Sydney, Australia in 1992 at Roslyn Okley9 Gallery. Here, she exhibited eight large canvases that were predominately black and white, including "Cinderella What?" (1992) and "Snow White?" (1992).
Denise Green has also written art criticism and published two books, "Metonymy in Contemporary Art: A New Paradigm" (2005) and "An Artist’s Odyssey" (2012). Her other writings about art have appeared in Art Press (Paris), Art Monthly Australia, Art & Australia, Arts Magazine (New York) and Asian Art News.
Currently, Green continues to paint, take photographs, and make collages and works on paper today.
Quotations: “The inspiration for my work comes not only from personal and psychological sources, but from diverse cultural sources such as Modern Western art and Aboriginal culture.”
Green is married to Dr. Francis X. Claps.