Ida Applebroog has died at the age of 93, according to a statement issued by Hauser & Wirth. Born in 1929 in Bronx, New York, Applebroog grew up in the authoritarian environment of an Orthodox Jewish family from Poland, where she observed ‘how power works’ from a young age. From 1948–1950, Applebroog studied graphic design at the New York Institute of Applied Arts and Sciences, after which she worked as the only female employee in an advertising agency. She later left to become a freelance illustrator after just six months, having experienced constant harassment. From 1965–1968, by then married with four children, she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 1969, Applebroog was briefly hospitalised for depression, having once more relocated with her family to San Diego, where she was subjected to domestic isolation. During her time at San Diego’s Mercy Hospital, she began making sketches of her naked body in her ‘little sanctuary’ in the hospital’s bathtub. The series of 150 ‘vagina drawings’ was not openly exhibited until 2010 at Hauser & Wirth in New York. Titled Monalisa (2009), the collection of line drawings was installed on a large cube-shaped wooden frame, covering both the exterior and interior of what’s suggestive of a domestic space.
Applebroog joined feminist group, the Heresies Collective upon returning to New York in 1974, and worked alongside figures such as curator Lucy Lippard and artists Joan Snyder and Pat Steir. Her later project engaged with themes of power, violence and gender politics, seen in works like Modern Olympia (1997–2001).
Applebroog’s work has been internationally shown at institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas, Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami, Florida, Kunstmuseum Thun and more recently the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.
