BALTIMORE.- The Baltimore Sun has reported that Grace Hartigan has died of liver disease at Lorien Mays Chapel in Timonium nursing home at the age of 86.

Grace Hartigan was an Abstract Expressionist painter. She gained her reputation as part of the New York School of artists and painters that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 50s. She was a lively participant in the vibrant artistic and literary milieu of the times, and her friends included Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Frank O'Hara, and many other painters, artists, poets, and writers. She was the only woman artist in the Museum of Modern Art's legendary The New American Painting exhibition which toured Europe in the late 1950s.

Hartigan relocated to Baltimore, Maryland in the 1960s where she resided until her death. Over the years she has had dozens of solo exhibits, as well as participating in group shows for galleries such as Tibor de Nagy and Martha Jackson in New York, and her paintings are held by prestigious museums such as the Metropolitan Museum and the Whitney Museum of Art. Since 1965 she has worked at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) where she is the director of the Hoffberger Graduate School of Painting; see Maryland Institute College of Art MFA Programs.