Aerosol Spray Paint
Aerosol spray paint was new to hardware store shelves in the early 1950s, and Hedda Sterne quickly found it to be an ideal medium for expressing a sense of speed, light, and motion in her paintings of the decade. She would often combine spray enamel and acrylic paints with oil and oil sticks on canvas to achieve deeply layered effects.
Chance Collage
Hedda Sterne used a surrealist automatist technique to create the collages she called papiers arrachés et interprètes. She would tear paper, let it fall, and then allow the chance-arranged abstract shapes to suggest forms that she developed with graphite.
Monotypes & Transfer Drawings
Hedda Sterne created a series of complex monotypes through experimentation with materials close at hand: oil paint, pencil, and paper. She applied layers of paint to a surface, placed paper on top, and drew with pencil on the paper to transfer lines of oil paint to the paper’s verso below.
![Hedda Sterne, Untitled [ Airplane cockpit ] , 1949, trace monotype, 15 7/16 × 10 3/8 in., Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase, with funds from the Print Committee 2007.11](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/586d344215d5dbe77c2087cf/1494346255340-8F302GXLB9IUOH884PSJ/hedda-sterne-monotype-whitney.jpg)
![Hedda Sterne, Untitled , 1949, Trace monotype, 14 1/4 x 10 1/4 in., Collection of Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Margaret Fisher Fund ([CDS Gallery, New York, New York], sold; to Harvard University Art Museums, December 15, 2005.), M26673](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/586d344215d5dbe77c2087cf/1494346235811-O4ZO1QAZEGOX62FZARIY/hedda-sterne-harvard-4513485.jpg)
Poured Acrylic
Hedda Sterne was an early adopter of acrylic paint in the 1950s, but it was in the 1960s that she became interested in using the medium like watercolor, thinned and poured onto large, unprimed canvases. The technique carried with it a spontaneous, automatic quality that directed her to proceed, as she would say, “sans regret.”
Rapidograph Technical Pen
Rapidograph technical pens were originally designed for use by engineers and architects who required precision lines in their drawings. Hedda Sterne used the thread-thin marks made by the pens to create complex automatic drawings, sometimes layering enough tiny lines to achieve areas of pitch black.
