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Description: Yield: The Journal of an Artist
Select Chronology
PublisherYale University Press
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Anne Truitt: Selected Chronology
1921
The artist is born Anne Dean in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 16.
1934
Truitt and her sisters are sent to live on her maternal Aunt Nancy and Uncle Jim Barr’s farm outside Charlottesville, Virginia. Jim’s brother is historian and author Stringfellow Barr, who will cofound the Great Books Program at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1937.
1938
Entering Bryn Mawr College at age seventeen, Truitt is a year younger than most of her fellow students. In November she almost dies from peritonitis brought on by a ruptured appendix. She is required to leave Bryn Mawr College to recuperate for the rest of the year.
1939
As part of her physical recovery, Truitt takes a rehabilitative exercise course at Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, during the summer. This firsthand experience with progressive treatments furthers her interest in psychology. She resumes her freshman year in the fall. Among the subjects that Truitt studies are Greek literature in translation, Renaissance and modern art, philosophy, psychology, and creative writing.
1943–44
Truitt graduates cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Bryn Mawr College. She returns for the summer to her father’s house in Asheville, where she works as a Red Cross nurse’s aide.
Truitt is admitted to Yale University to pursue a doctorate in psychology but declines to attend, realizing that she prefers to work directly with people. She joins her sisters in the Boston–Cambridge area and begins a job at Massachusetts General Hospital in the psychiatric lab. She takes a second job at night as a nurse’s aide in the same hospital: “The more I observed the range of human existence—and I was steeped in pain during those war years when we had combat fatigue patients in the psychiatric laboratory by day and I had anguished patients under my hands by night—the less convinced I became that I wished to restrict my own range to the perpetuation of what psychologists would call ‘normal’ . . . I honestly do not believe that I would be an artist now if I had not been first a nurse’s aide.”1Anne Truitt, Daybook: The Journal of an Artist (New York: Pantheon, 1982), 65–66.
Truitt continues to write poetry and short stories.
1946
In the spring, Truitt becomes aware of the limitations of her role in professional psychology during a psychiatric testing session with a patient. She leaves her position as a psychiatric assistant but continues her job as a nurse’s aide.
1947
The artist marries James Truitt on September 19 in Washington, DC, where he works for the US Department of State.
1948
Truitt accompanies her husband to New York when he leaves the Department of State to work as a journalist for Life. While in New York, she works administering psychological tests. James Truitt is transferred back to Washington, DC, in September. From February 1948 to October 1949, Truitt keeps a journal that chronicles her growing frustration with the limitations of narrative writing and her increasing interest in the visual arts as a means of expression.2Although Truitt wrote in Daybook that she “abandoned writing for sculpture in 1948” (43), Truitt’s journal from the time indicates that she continued to pursue both writing and art-making simultaneously at least through October 6, 1949, the last entry in the journal. Box 1, folder 16, Anne Truitt Papers, Special Collections Department, Bryn Mawr College Library.
1949
On February 8, Truitt begins attending the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Washington, DC, where she studies sculpture with Alexander Giampietro.3While Truitt recorded in Daybook that she took classes from Giampietro from September 1948 through December 1949 (127), her 1948–49 journal gives us the exact start date of February 8, 1949. She further elaborated in her February 4, 1949, entry that she “Registered at Inst Contemp Art to-day for sculpture. Taught by Giampietro, according to Richman a good man.” Box 1, folder 16, Anne Truitt Papers, Special Collections Department, Bryn Mawr College Library.
1952
Truitt uses a small coach house in Georgetown as a studio. During the years she spends at this studio, Truitt will work in many different ways: building figures, including life-size torsos, out of colored cement, clay, and Sculpmetal, as well as carving stone. She also begins to layer and solder wire into geometric constructions, painting some sections.
The artist is involved with the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The Institute will invite a range of speakers whom the Truitts entertain in their Georgetown home, including Truman Capote, Marcel Duchamp, Naum Gabo, Bernard Leach, Alberto Moravia, Isamu Noguchi, Sir Herbert Read, Hans Richter, D. T. Suzuki, Rufino Tamayo, and Dylan Thomas.
1953
Truitt cotranslates Germaine Brée’s book Du Temps perdu au temps retrouvé: Introduction à l’oeuvre de Marcel Proust (Marcel Proust and Deliverance from Time) from French.
1955
Truitt gives birth to a daughter, Alexandra, on December 2.
1957
The family moves to San Francisco, California, where James Truitt has been made bureau chief for all Time publications.
1958
Truitt’s second child, Mary, is born on March 27.
1959
By 1959, the family has moved to San Francisco’s Divisadero Street. A room on the third floor serves as Truitt’s studio, where she makes drawings in black, brown, and pink ink on newsprint. Truitt socializes with artists and writers, including Anthony Caro, Richard Diebenkorn, Clement Greenberg, Louisa Jenkins, and David Sylvester. The Truitts also take frequent trips to Big Sur, where they own land on Partington Ridge, and spend time with archaeologist Giles Healy, who was the first non-Maya to see and photograph the Maya site of Bonampak in 1946.
1960
The Truitts return to Washington, DC, in July when James Truitt accepts a position as assistant to Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post; by 1963, he will have been appointed vice president of the company and publisher of ARTnews, then owned by the Washington Post Company. The couple is part of a lively social circle of journalists, artists, politicians, and government officials, based largely in Georgetown. At a dinner party at Mary Pinchot Meyer’s house, the artist meets David Smith. He will become a friend and an important source of information about making a life as a sculptor. Samuel (Sam), Truitt’s third child, is born on November 12.
1961
On a visit to New York in November, Truitt views the work of Ad Reinhardt, Barnett Newman, and Nassos Daphnis for the first time, in the Guggenheim Museum’s exhibition American Abstract Expressionists and Imagists. She will later observe that this encounter exposed her to the conceptual possibilities of art.
1962
Truitt rents a carriage house at Twining Court near DuPont Circle in Washington, DC. There she makes or initiates at least thirty-five sculptures and a number of works on paper over the course of the year.4Records kept by the artist account for thirty-five works dating to 1962, including an unpainted panel, while Truitt recalled making thirty-seven works in Daybook, 153.
1963
Truitt’s first solo exhibition at André Emmerich Gallery in Manhattan opens February 12.5From 1963 to 1996 Truitt was represented by and regularly exhibited at André Emmerich Gallery. Donald Judd, whose work will become closely affiliated with the emerging Minimalist aesthetic but will not be the subject of a solo exhibition until December 1963, briefly reviews Truitt’s show for the April edition of Arts Magazine, observing that “the work looks serious without being so.”6Donald Judd, “In the Galleries: Anne Truitt,” Arts Magazine 37, no. 8 (April 1963): 61; James Meyer, Minimalism (London: Phaidon, 2000), 194. Michael Fried also mentions the show in a review for Art International.
1964
Truitt’s work is included in the group exhibition Black, White and Grey, organized by Samuel Wagstaff for the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut.
James Truitt accepts a position as Far East Bureau chief for Newsweek. The family moves to Tokyo in May, remaining there until 1967.
1966
Truitt’s work is included in Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculpture at the Jewish Museum in New York, organized by Kynaston McShine. During an overseas trip to Washington, DC, in the spring, Truitt meets curator Walter Hopps.
1967
The Truitt family returns to Washington, DC, in June when James Truitt becomes a general correspondent for Newsweek and the first editor of the Washington Post’s Style section.
1969
The Truitts separate in February, although their divorce will not become official until March 1971. Truitt takes primary custody of and financial responsibility for all three children. In May, she buys a house in the Cleveland Park area of Washington, DC, where she will live for the rest of her life.
By the late 1960s, Truitt, who as a child attended Episcopalian services with her family and had remained an Episcopalian, has also been introduced to the moral philosophy of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1877–1949). Around the same time, she begins to follow the teachings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, a nonsectarian spiritual organization, originating in India, which leads her to follow a lifelong practice of vegetarianism and daily meditation.
1973
The Whitney Museum of American Art mounts a retrospective of Truitt’s sculpture and drawings, primarily organized by Walter Hopps, from December to January 1974.
1974
On April 21, an expanded version of Walter Hopps’s retrospective of Truitt’s sculpture and drawings opens at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. On a trip to Arizona in June, Truitt begins the journal that will later become Daybook.
On the recommendation of artist Helen Frankenthaler, Truitt is invited to Yaddo, an artist’s residency program in Saratoga Springs, New York, for the first time. She will return to Yaddo throughout her life, working on sculptures, drawings, and the manuscripts for all four of her books.
1975
In March, Truitt spends two weeks in residence on Ossabaw Island, Georgia, and comes to realize that her journal begun in June 1974 might become a viable manuscript (Daybook will be published in 1982). She visits Yaddo for another residency.
In the fall she begins teaching as a part-time lecturer in the Art Department of the University of Maryland, College Park.
1980
Truitt is promoted from lecturer to tenured full professor at the University of Maryland.
1981
In September, while at Yaddo, she writes her preface for Daybook.
On November 17, James Truitt commits suicide at his home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
1982
Truitt begins writing the journal that will become her second book, Turn. Pantheon Books publishes Truitt’s first book, Daybook: The Journal of an Artist, on October 12.
1983
After discovering salary inequities between herself and a male colleague at the University of Maryland, Truitt initiates litigation against the university, hoping that this action might establish greater pay equity for other female professors. In early September, faced with the financial drain of a prolonged court case, Truitt drops the lawsuit.
1984
The artist begins a yearlong sabbatical from the University of Maryland. She travels to Paris; Asolo, Italy; and London, which she will write about in Turn. Truitt serves as acting executive director of Yaddo from April 1 to December 31.
1985
In October, Truitt is invited to Lincoln, Nebraska, to give a series of talks on Willa Cather as well as her own work at the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and the Lincoln City Library. Truitt visits Yaddo from December 13 to 23 and completes final revisions to Turn.
1986
Viking Penguin Books publishes Truitt’s second book, Turn: The Journal of an Artist.
1991
Drawing on journals begun two weeks before her retrospective and kept during her 1989 trip across Canada, Truitt works on her third book, Prospect, while in residence at Yaddo from December 18 to January 5, 1992.
1992
Anne Truitt: A Life in Art, a retrospective of Truitt’s work organized by Brenda Richardson, is held at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
1996
In October, Scribner publishes Prospect: The Journal of an Artist. After the fall semester, Truitt retires from teaching at the University of Maryland.
2001
During her residency at Yaddo, from September to October, Truitt works on the Piths, a numerically titled series of individual canvas works painted in black acrylic on both sides. She will continue working on this series for the next three years.
James Meyer’s book Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties discusses Truitt’s sculpture in relation to Minimalist aesthetics and theory.
Truitt begins the journals that will become the manuscript for her final book, Yield: The Journal of an Artist, the fourth volume of Truitt’s memoirs.
2003
From October 1 to November 2, Truitt is in residence at Yaddo, where she makes two series of works on paper: Sound and Waterleaf.
2004
She completes several sculptures and finishes the Pith series of paintings on canvas.
Anne Truitt dies in Washington, DC, on December 23, leaving one unfinished sculpture.
 
1     Anne Truitt, Daybook: The Journal of an Artist (New York: Pantheon, 1982), 65–66. »
2     Although Truitt wrote in Daybook that she “abandoned writing for sculpture in 1948” (43), Truitt’s journal from the time indicates that she continued to pursue both writing and art-making simultaneously at least through October 6, 1949, the last entry in the journal. Box 1, folder 16, Anne Truitt Papers, Special Collections Department, Bryn Mawr College Library. »
3     While Truitt recorded in Daybook that she took classes from Giampietro from September 1948 through December 1949 (127), her 1948–49 journal gives us the exact start date of February 8, 1949. She further elaborated in her February 4, 1949, entry that she “Registered at Inst Contemp Art to-day for sculpture. Taught by Giampietro, according to Richman a good man.” Box 1, folder 16, Anne Truitt Papers, Special Collections Department, Bryn Mawr College Library. »
4     Records kept by the artist account for thirty-five works dating to 1962, including an unpainted panel, while Truitt recalled making thirty-seven works in Daybook, 153. »
5     From 1963 to 1996 Truitt was represented by and regularly exhibited at André Emmerich Gallery. »
6     Donald Judd, “In the Galleries: Anne Truitt,” Arts Magazine 37, no. 8 (April 1963): 61; James Meyer, Minimalism (London: Phaidon, 2000), 194. »
Anne Truitt: Selected Chronology