Frank Mary

Mary Frank, born Mary Lockspeiser on February 4, 1933, in London, is a distinguished British-American visual artist known for her work as a sculptor, painter, printmaker, draftswoman, and illustrator. She was the sole child of Eleanore Lockspeiser, an American painter, and Edward Lockspeiser, an English musicologist and art critic.

In 1939, at the onset of World War II, Mary relocated from London to various boarding schools before moving to Brooklyn, New York, in 1940 to live with her maternal grandparents. Her artistic education began with studies in modern dance under the tutelage of Martha Graham from 1945 to 1950. She attended the High School of Music & Art in New York in 1947 and later transferred to the Professional Children’s School in 1949, focusing on dance.

During her high school years, Mary met and married Swiss photographer Robert Frank in 1950. She pursued wood carving at Alfred van Loen’s studio and studied drawing with Max Beckmann at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. Additionally, she briefly studied under Hans Hofmann in 1951 and 1954.

Mary Frank first exhibited her drawings in 1958 at the Poindexter Gallery in New York City. In 1969, her collaboration with the Zabriskie Gallery in New York marked a significant phase in her career, as she began working in clay inspired by Margaret Ponce Israel. During this period, she also illustrated the children’s book “Buddha” by Joan Lebols Cohen.

Throughout her career, Mary has been largely self-taught, notably without formal training in sculpture. Her work has earned her numerous accolades, including two Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship Awards in 1973 and 1983, the Lee Krasner Award of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 1993, and the Joan Mitchell Grant Award in 1995. In 1984, she was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and by 1994, she became a full Academician at the National Academy of Design.

Mary’s distinguished career spans five decades, during which she served as a professor at Bard College, where she held the Milton Avery Chair, Distinguished Professor title.

Mary Frank experienced profound personal loss with the tragic death of her daughter Andrea in a 1974 plane crash and the passing of her son Pablo, who suffered from schizophrenia and Hodgkin’s lymphoma, in 1994. She divorced Robert Frank in 1969 and later married Leo Treitler, a pianist and music scholar, in 1995. Mary currently resides and works in Lake Hill, New York, and New York City.

Mary Frank’s works are part of prestigious permanent collections, including those of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others.

Her legacy as an influential artist continues to inspire and captivate audiences worldwide, reflecting her profound impact on the visual arts.