Rago Auctions

Susan Hauptman was an artist who solely worked in charcoal or pastel on paper. She is known for her life size self-portraits and still lifes, depicting imagery that is almost photographic in usually grey or sepia tones. Her self-portraits, self-assured and direct, often challenge notions of traditional feminine identity and embrace androgyny or inverted gender roles. Hauptman almost always wears no make-up, sports a short haircut, and juxtaposes these gender-neutral choices with feminine outfits such as ballerina dresses and ruffled skirts. These works display Hauptman’s technical mastery in drawing and explore the artist’s journey of self-discovery.

Susan Hauptman was born in Michigan in 1947. She received her BFA from the University of Michigan and her MFA from the Wayne State University in Detroit. She has shown widely in the United States, and her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR, and the Norton Gallery of Art, FL. She has received grants from teh National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation. She held the Lamar-Dodd Professorial Chair at the University of Georgia from 1997-2000. She died in 2015 in New York.