Betty Merken is an American painter and printmaker whose paintings and prints recall the early Modernist works of Piet Mondrian and the work of American artists such as Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, often echoing freedoms of painterly gesture pioneered by the Abstract Expressionists.
Her work can be found in several galleries and in numerous private and public collections in the United States, Asia, and Europe, and in the permanent collections of several major museums, including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (The de Young Museum and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor), the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon.[1]
A fine arts graduate of the University of Washington in Seattle, Betty Merken has been honored with fellowships from the BAU Institute and the Northwest Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in Italy.[2] She is the co-author, with Stefan Merken, of Wall Art, Megamurals and Supergraphics (Philadelphia: Running Press, 1987).[3]
Galleries in the United States which represent the work of Betty Merken include:
Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Gebert Contemporary, Scottsdale, AZ, Laura Russo Gallery, Portland, OR, and Sears Peyton Gallery, NY.
