Betty Holliday

Elizabeth Gertrude Holliday (23 May 1925—3 April 2011), known professionally as Betty Holliday and Betty Holliday Deckoff, was an American visual artist and educator who was active on Long Island, New York, and in New York City.

Early life, education, and employment Betty Holliday was the youngest daughter of Gertrude Holliday and George Alvin Holliday (1887–1970); she had one sister, Priscilla.

After completing her formal education, Holliday worked as an editorial associate for ARTnews (1950–55), which familiarized her with the works of contemporary artists. She also taught privately and many of her students became professional artists, including Shirley Gorelick, Deborah Katz, Peter Galasso, and Sigrid Somers.

Abstract Expressionism Holliday began to explore nonobjectivity in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but her figural abstractions attracted the earliest published critical attention. My Father (1960), a monumental abstraction of George Alvin Holliday seated in a chair, was prominently reproduced in Art in America to illustrate how the nontraditional, unsymbolic figurative works of "fledgling artists" attested to the flexibility of abstraction and representation. Even in her earliest works, Holliday was able to "reveal the truth of the figure which is just as well expressed by its stance, its total gesture, as by its individual features" through the language of Abstract Expressionism.

Later works Around 1972, Holliday reintroduced some limited color and returned to painting large figures, characterized by bold brushstrokes and simple, direct compositions. Holliday's fascination with Moore led to the creation of countless works. When The Sister Chapel premiered in 1978, one reviewer reported that Holliday had executed three hundred drawings and five full-sized paintings of Marianne Moore. In these works, all of her figures were more energetic than in her earlier, more static paintings. At the time, Holliday’s monumental and expressive figures were described by a reviewer in The New York Times as "a body of work that restates a classic tradition with marked originality."

Holliday's final works were large-scale drawings, including The Judgment of Paris (1990), which was described by Helen Harrison as "a witty, geriatric takeoff on the mythological encounter."