HAFIF, MARCIA

* 15.08.1929 Pomoa, † 17.04.2018 Laguna Beach

Marcia Hafif was born on 15 August 1929 in Pomoa, California. Hafif was one of the pioneers of the 1970s who expanded the concept of the practice of painting and the understanding of art itself with fundamentally new perspectives. Hafif received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Pomona College, California in 1951 and then went on to work as a teacher. In the late 1950s, she began further studies at the Claremont Graduate School, specialising in the Italian Renaissance and Far Eastern Art. In the summer of 1960, Hafif, together with Richards Ruben, attended a seminar, through which she met Walter Hopps and numerous artists exhibiting at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles.

In 1961 Hafif then went to stay in Italy and spent 8 years in Rome. After returning to California in 1969, she attended the first Master of Fine Arts class at the University of California in Irvine. For a short time, Hafif tried her hand at photography, film, sound, text and installation art. In 1971, she moved to New York to find her way back to painting. In 1972, she completed her first pencil drawing. She started in the upper left corner and covered the page across and down with short vertical marks.

When she returned to painting, Hafif continued in this mode, methodically covering her canvases with short vertical marks of colour. Marcia Hafif died on 17 April 2018 in Laguna Beach, California.