Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville (born 1940) is an American graphic designer, artist and educator whose work reflects her belief in the importance of feminist principles and user participation in graphic design. In 1990, she became the director of the Yale University Graduate Program in Graphic Design and the first woman to receive tenure at the Yale University School of Art. In 2010, she was named the Caroline M. Street Professor of Graphic Design. Her mother brought her to painting lessons at the Brooklyn Museum as a child. She graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1959. At Lincoln, she studied under Leon Friend who first exposed her to modern graphic design and the social responsibility of designers and encouraged her to participate in design and painting competitions. in 1962 and an MFA in graphic design from Yale University in 1964 and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), the Moore College of Art and California College of the Arts. She married in 1965, adopting the married name Sheila Levrant de Bretteville.

Career De Bretteville moved to Los Angeles around 1969, working as an in-house graphic designer at the California Institute of the Arts before becoming the first woman faculty member in the design department in 1970. In 1971, she founded the first design program for women at CalArts, and two years later co-founded the Woman's Building, a public center in Los Angeles dedicated to women's education and culture. In 1973, de Bretteville founded the Women's Graphic Center and co-founded the Feminist Studio Workshop (along with Judy Chicago and Arlene Raven), both based at the Woman's Building.

She designed a necklace of an eye bolt on a chain, meant to represent "strength without a fist" as well as the biological symbol of women; she gave the first of these to Arlene Raven and Judy Chicago when they started the Feminist Studio Workshop in 1972. Since then, she has given them to other women with whom she shares a vision of the creation of women's culture. Various women including many in the Feminist Studio Workshop submitted entries exploring their association with the color. De Bretteville arranged the squares of paper to form a "quilt" from which posters were printed and disseminated throughout Los Angeles. She was referred to by the nickname "Pinky" as a result.

De Bretteville has worked extensively in the field of public art creating works embedded within city neighborhoods. One of her best-known pieces is "Biddy Mason's Place: A Passage of Time,” an 82-foot concrete wall with embedded objects in downtown Los Angeles that tells the story of Biddy Mason, a former slave who became a midwife in Los Angeles and lived near the site. She collaborated with Betye Saar to create the piece. The 1996 project "Remembering Little Tokyo" is also located in Los Angeles; de Bretteville collaborated with artist Sonya Ishii to interview residents and create brass tiled etched with symbols representing local history and Japanese American identities. She also created the mural "At the Start... At Long Last" for the Inwood-207th Street station in New York City, which was influenced by the song "Take the A Train" by jazz musician Billy Strayhorn.

De Bretteville's work as a feminist, activist, educator, public artist, and graphic designer was the subject of the 2024 exhibition "Sheila Levrant de Bretteville: Community, Activism, and Design" co-curated by independent curator Brooke Hodge and YUAG curator of American decorative arts John Stuart Gordon for Yale University Art Gallery. This was the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to the important work of de Bretteville and included many original materials from the artist's own collection.

De Bretteville was interviewed for the film !Women Art Revolution.

She is a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Awards She has been honored with many awards, such as a 2009 “Grandmaster” award from the New York Art Directors Club and several awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, including a "Design Legend Gold Medal" for 2004, "Best Public Artwork" recognition for 2005 from Americans for the Arts, and several honorary doctorates. In 2016, de Bretteville received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women's Caucus for Art.