Rita Deanin Abbey

Rita Deanin Abbey (July 20, 1930 – March 20, 2021) was a multidisciplinary abstract artist and among the first art professors at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Born in New Jersey to Polish immigrants, she moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1965 to teach, living there for 56 years and contributing several large-scale public artworks. She was an artist-in-residence at the studios of many artists and institutions, had over 60 individual exhibitions, and participated in over 160 national and international group exhibitions.

Abbey was known for her many and various uses of media, including painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, porcelain enamel fired on steel, stained glass, and computer art. A year after her death, the Rita Deanin Abbey Art Museum opened in Las Vegas. The museum displays her outdoor sculptures and a selection of her extensive body of work.

Early life and education Rita Deanin was born in 1930 in Passaic, New Jersey and graduated from Passaic High School in 1948, where she was voted "most talented" by her fellow graduates. She studied at Goddard College in Vermont from 1948 to 1950 before moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to receive a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1952 and a Master of Arts degree in 1954 from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. In the summers of 1952 and 1954, she studied under Hans Hofmann at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in Massachusetts.

Style and influences While living in Albuquerque, Abbey developed a strong affinity for the landscape of the American Southwest. The desert became a primary influence in her work. Abbey's emotional responses to the natural environment were recorded in highly expressive works. She studied the line, pattern, color, space, light, form, and texture of geological formations and recreated the spirit and essence of the desert in abstract compositions. In a review for "Dance Eternal", Las Vegas local arts administrator Dan Skea wrote the piece "demonstrates Abbey's excellence as a draftsman. Her line, always bold and rhythmic, is bursting with supple eloquence"

Abbey wrote and published poetry, welded, and learned a number of obscure crafts as well as traditional art media, influenced by a desire to "conquer every medium."

Notable work

Public art Abbey's works on display around Las Vegas include stained glass windows and large-scale sculptures, as well as a bust of Flora Dungan in the Humanities building at UNLV and a plexiglass mural in a University Medical Center building.

Paintings Abbey's painting Dawn at Arches (1957) is mentioned in her first husband's novel The Brave Cowboy and appears in the background of the film adaptation starring Kirk Douglas.

Bridge Mountain (1974), a five-panel, mural was on display in the lobby of The Judy Bayley Theatre at UNLV for 20 years. Abbey intended the piece to evoke the motion of the female figure and the notion of recurring rhythmic cycles. After the painting was reported to have been damaged, Abbey requested its return to her collection. The mural is now on permanent display in the Rita Deanin Abbey Art Museum.

Awards and exhibitions In 1986, Abbey received the Governor's Seventh Annual Visual Arts Award for the State of Nevada. After her nearly five decades of working in Las Vegas, the City of Las Vegas Office of Cultural Affairs Las Vegas Arts Commission awarded her a Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2012. Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, Japan, International Exhibition of Enameling Art in Japan prize award, 1987 Citizen Alert: Environmental Artist of the Year Award Las Vegas, May 7, 1993 Women's History Month: Recognized for her contributions to the Arts by the Mayor and Members of the Las Vegas City Council, Las Vegas, March 2008 University of Las Vegas, College of Fine Art, Las Vegas, NV, 20th Annual College of Fine Arts Hall of Fame Award, April 3, 2024

Rita Deanin Abbey 35 Year Retrospective The Palm Springs Desert Museum (now Palm Springs Art Museum) has four of her works in its permanent collection, and also commissioned a limited print edition by Abbey, "Spirit Mover" (1987), for its 60th anniversary.

In 1988, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Marjorie Barrick Museum, and the Palm Springs Desert Museum collaborated to present the "Rita Deanin Abbey 35 Year Retrospective," a 20-piece exhibition held for five months at UNLV in February to March and the Palm Springs Desert Museum in March through June. The couple divorced after 13 years.

Abbey moved to Las Vegas in 1965 and was hired as a teacher at Nevada Southern University. When Nevada Southern University became the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) in 1969, Abbey was the only female faculty member in the art department. She taught drawing, painting, and color theory classes and developed interdisciplinary classes with the science department. She retired and became a professor emeritus of art in 1987 after 22 years of teaching. In The Las Vegas Review-Journal's obituary, Clark County cultural observer Patrick Gaffey called her "the most important unknown artist in Southern Nevada."

The Rita Deanin Abbey Art Museum In the final years of her life, Abbey oversaw the construction of a museum on her property in the (then-undeveloped) northwest area of Las Vegas called Desert Space. Robert Bealleveau and Rita Deanin Abbey Foundation completed Desert Space and renamed it the Rita Deanin Abbey Art Museum. The museum opened to the public in 2022.

History Abbey planned to build a gallery on her property from as early as 2000. The area northwest of the Las Vegas metropolitan area was largely undeveloped during her lifetime, leaving the desert mountains in plain view and contributing to her association with the western aesthetic. Construction began in 2011 under the name Desert Space Museum. In addition to designing the architecture, Abbey personally arranged the floor tiling of the museum, and crafted the museum's doors. Several of the 12 rooms in the gallery focus only on a single series or period of art. In explaining the museum's potential, Hough called it "the reintroduction of a serious, one-of-a-kind artist who spent so many productive years off the grid. She hasn't really been discovered... And this will be discovered."

Publications