Manon Cleary

Manon Cleary (November 14, 1942 – November 26, 2011) was an American artist based in Washington, D.C. Cleary specialized in photo-realistic paintings and drawings. Many of her works were inspired by events in her life and focused on the human form and lights.

Cleary received her bachelor's degree from Washington University in her hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. She later received her master's degree from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1970, shortly after graduation, Cleary moved to Washington, D.C. where she worked at the University of the District of Columbia as a professor for thirty years.

Cleary's style of art is realistic; it is said that she would often win awards for her work in the photography category by mistake. This style allowed her to create works that were softer and more personal, but still realistic.

Cleary died in 2011 at the age of 69. She suffered for many years from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Gallery of Art. She held numerous solo exhibitions and was a part of many exhibitions worldwide.

Early life and education Cleary was born on November 14, 1942, in St. Louis, Missouri with her identical twin sister, Shirley Cleary-Cooper. Cleary and her twin were very similar growing up, and Cleary stated in an interview that they were dressed alike by their mother until adulthood. Her father was a general practitioner in St. Louis and brought home almost every disease and epidemic that hit the city. Cleary and her sister were at home, sick for much of their childhood. It was during this time at home that they both turned to art. They continued their artistic careers by associating with the art museum and majoring in art in high school.

Cleary went to Washington University in St. Louis and received her degree in 1964. After graduating, Cleary applied to spend her first year of graduate school in Rome, for the Tyler School of Art.

Themes and subjects

Cleary was best known for her nude figure drawings, her most common subject being herself. She was considered by many to be perhaps the best figure painter not only in Washington D.C. but in the country, painting idealized images of her subjects and herself. In her mid-thirties she acknowledged she had not accepted her aging and was removing blemishes from her paintings, claiming she doesn't "paint the grotesque", but the ideal. The rats were often drawn in pastels, and Cleary had truly mastered their likeness. In one memorable piece Untitled, Cleary painted two life-size rats (green and soft pink) serving her as she reclined nude on a divan while smoking.

Another theme that is very apparent in Cleary's work is sexuality. Some of her art is frank and bold, like her series of large oil paintings from the early 1990s that studied male genitalia.

Teaching career and life in Washington D.C. Cleary taught at the University of the District of Columbia for 30 years, beloved by her students and by many of the local artists in Washington, D.C. She was a collector of local art, a supporter of local artists and a longtime member of the Arts Club of Washington. After a couple of years in Washington, D.C., she moved into Beverly Court Apartments—now Beverly Court Cooperative. It was the epicenter of art in the 1970s for Washington, D.C. and Cleary was the star. Beverly Court housed artists such as Allan Bridge, Yuri Schwebler, Jonathan Meader, and Angelo Hodick. Cleary would host dinner parties for the building, and a communal living arrangement of sorts took place. The doors to apartments were often open, and artists collaborated on art together. Beverly Court was bought by its residents in 1979 after most of the artists had left, and it became the first cooperative in Washington, D.C.

Personal life In 1981, Cleary was briefly married to a man named Tommy Iven Hansen, who was a young art student from Denmark. They were divorced about a year later.

In 1996, Cleary experienced a traumatic event while visiting Kazakhstan that year to lecture about art. She was sexually assaulted by a Kazakh artist and she left the country quickly in a state of denial. It took Cleary several months to start to examine her feelings and ended up creating an evocative series titled, "The Rape Series" after the event. The series features paintings of Cleary's face, shaped in horror and pain, with red paint splattered over the canvas. The paintings are the most nonconventional of Cleary's portfolio, with some of the canvases burned or slashed. Cleary's attacker was invited to Washington, D.C. for a show on Kazakhstan art in 1998, but was luckily denied entry into the United States. The news was hard to take for Cleary, but she believes because of an affidavit she signed with the State Department upon returning from Kazakhstan, he was turned away.

Cleary met her second husband, F. Steven Kijek, a dancer, in Baltimore at a party after a gallery opening. When they met, he supposedly stripped naked in the middle of a crowd and asked if she would like to paint him. They were married in 2001.

2014-Arts Club of Washington - Manon Cleary, Obsessive Observer: A New Perspective Through Her Photographic Studies 2009-Addison/Ripley Gallery, DC 2007-DC Arts Center 2006-Emerson Gallery, DC 1972-Franz Bader Gallery, DC1968-Tyler Gallery, Philadelphia