Hang-Up Gallery

Joyce Pensato was a contemporary American artist known for her gestural depictions of Homer Simpson, Donald Duck, and Batman, in black and white enamel paint. “I asked Chris Wool what kind of paint he was using, and he said enamel. I always lost the figure when I used oil paint,” she has explained of her switch to the medium. Born in 1941 in Brooklyn, NY, she studied at the New York Studio School under Joan Mitchell and was influenced by the works of Franz Kline and Philip Guston. First attempting her hand at abstraction, Pensato’s underlying interest in the dark side of popular culture led her to begin painting figures from comics and cartoons. Over the years that followed, the artist was the subject of exhibitions and the...