Dotty Attie

Dotty Attie (born 1938 ) is an American feminist painter, and the co-founder of the first all-female cooperative art gallery in the US, A.I.R. Gallery. Her work has been exhibited and is in museum collections, including the Whitney, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery in London. She also has an all-female punk rock band named after her. Attie resides in New York City.

Early life and work Attie was born in Pennsauken, New Jersey, and discovered her interest in art at an early age, as she found that she was interested in drawing. She was heavily influenced by her father, who brought her to art classes in Philadelphia and provided her with art books, most notably ones with illustrations of works by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Although her favorite living artist happens to be Gerhard Richter.

Attie continued her education at the Philadelphia College of Art, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1959.

Feminism and A.I.R. Gallery

Attie's work in the 1960s received some attention, but gained far more recognition after her involvement in A.I.R. Gallery. In 1972, she co-founded A.I.R., a non-profit cooperative gallery and one of the first to exclusively feature the work of women artists. As an early artist-member, Attie helped the group to choose a gallery space and recruit members. Attie had her first solo show at the gallery in 1972. Because Attie, at times, has meticulously repainted well-known works but presented them in fragments or with other modifications, her work has addressed the concepts of originality and reproduction.

Attie's work is often characterized by her identification with feminism. She has explained, that feminism "means no barriers between what a woman chooses to do, and what is acceptable by societal and familial standards."

Awards and recognition Dotty Attie received multiple grants for her artwork, one being the Creative Artist Public Service Grant in 1976-77 and another being the National Endowment for the Arts Grant, which she won in 1976-77 and 1983–84.

Later career Her most recent exhibitions have been at the P.P.O.W. Gallery in New York City. What Would Mother Say (2009) featured children engaging in actions which, while innocent, may be construed by adults as provocative or shameful; each work is accompanied by two panels of text. More recently, The Lone Ranger (2013) served as a follow-up to What Would Mother Say and included a photo of a boy kissing a horse. According to Attie, that little boy grew up to be the Lone Ranger. In 2013 she was working on a series of painting called the “Worst Case Scenarios”.

Attie's paintings are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery in London, and many others.

In addition to numerous honors in the art world, such as her induction into the National Academy in 2013, Attie has the unusual distinction of having a punk rock band named after her; the female-led indie quartet Dottie Attie, based in Portland, Oregon, formed in 2013. Attie has been photographed wearing the band's t-shirts.

Personal life Attie's first life partner was David Attie, a prominent American commercial and fine art photographer with whom she had two sons, the widely published mathematician Oliver Attie and TV writer Eli Attie. Her current partner is David Olan, a classical composer.