Dorothy Grebenak

Grebenak was born in Oxford, Nebraska of Irish descent. Her husband Louis, also an artist, was a WPA printmaker who later turned to Hard-Edge painting. The couple lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn until 1971. Grebenak taught high school and studied dance. By 1948 she was making rugs which she initially sold in the shop at the Brooklyn Museum. Her hooked rugs differed from contemporary craft artists' fiber art in two significant ways: first, their pop imagery made them more fine than folk art; second, they were intended not for use on the floor, but to be hung on the wall as a painting would be.

In 1963 and 1964 Grebenak had two solo exhibitions at Allan Stone Gallery,[1] through which her rugs entered the private collections of major art collectors, including Nelson Rockefeller, Albert and Vera List,[2] William and Norma Copley, Carter Burden, and John and Kimiko Powers. Her work was featured in various group exhibitions and was included in the Milwaukee Art Museum's Pop Art and the American Tradition exhibition in 1965. Her work was featured in a leading national magazine in the late sixties, with an illustration of her "Man-hole cover" rug. She wove a blanket and small rugs as gifts to her grand nephew and grand nieces. She used wool colored with natural dyes.

Despite her modest critical and commercial success at mid-century, Grebenak all but disappeared from the art world soon thereafter. Many of her rugs, too, have either vanished or fallen apart over time. After her husband's death in 1971, she relocated to London where she died in 1990.[3]

1. Sid Sachs and Kalliopi Minioudaki, Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968. Philadelphia, PA: University of the Arts, Philadelphia, 2010.
2. Jean Lipman, "Money for Money's Sake," Art in America v. 58 (January 1970), pp. 76–79.
3. Rita Reif, "There's a Nude Sitting On the Lists' Piano," The New York Times, March 5, 1966, p. 39.

• Two Views of Pop – Don Nice and Dorothy Grebenak – Exhibitions at Allan Stone Gallery