Background
Heilmann was born in San Francisco, California, in 1940.
Heilmann was born in San Francisco, California, in 1940.
She studied at the University of California at Santa Barbara (1959 – 1962), San Francisco State University (1963) and the University of California at Berkeley (1963 – 1967).
She has lived and worked in New York since 1968. Heilmann moved to New York City after graduating from Berkeley in 1968. Early in her career, Heilmann became interested in popular culture and minimalist sculpture, creating works which were inspired by these areas.
Her move into painting saw her further experiment with new techniques and mediums, bright colours, drips, flatness, and unusual geometries.
She is respected among her fellow painters, and has been called "one of the most important abstract painters of her generation". Her work has been the subject of many exhibitions since 1970. and the BACA Award, 2012.
2012
In addition to solo exhibitions at Secession in Vienna (2003), the Camden Arts Centre, London (2001) and at the Kunstmuseum Saint Gallen (2000), she has participated in important exhibitions such as The Broken Mirror " at the Kunsthalle Wien (1993/94) and "nuevas abstracciones" at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid (1996). In 2007 she was part of an exhibition at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach (California), which travelled to the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in Houston Texas, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus Ohio and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New New York
In 2013 Heilmann exhibited at the Kunstmuseum Bonn, "Mary Blinky Yay" and Neues Museum Nürnberg, "Mary Heilmann.
Good Vibrations", two shows which directly followed her 2012 exhibitions at Bonnefantenmuseum, "Mary Heilmann. Good Vibrations", Maastricht and Hauser & Wirth London, "Visions, Waves and Roads".