Joyce Pensato

Joyce Pensato was an American artist who gained recognition for her painted renditions of iconic pop culture and cartoon figures, including Batman and Mickey Mouse.

Biography of Joyce Pensato

Joyce Pensato was born in 1941 in Brooklyn. She pursued her studies at both the Art Students League of New York and the New York Studio School.

In 1996, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. The following year, in 1997, she was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award. More recent accolades include the Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2010), The Award of Merit Medal for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2012), and The Robert de Niro, Sr. Prize (2013). 

Joyce Pensato passed away in 2019 at the age of 77.

Solo exhibitions of Joyce Pensato's artworks included "Joyce Pensato: L.A. Show" at Grice Bench in Los Angeles (2018), "FORGETTABOUT IT" at Lisson Gallery in London (2017), "Make My Day" at Petzel Gallery in New York (2017), and many more. 

Pensato's art was presented at numerous group exhibitions, including "Knock Knock: Humour in Contemporary Art" at South London Gallery in London (2018), "Close: Drawn Portraits" at Drawing Room in London (2018), "Fast Forward: Paintings from the 1980's" at Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2017), among others. 

Joyce Pensato's Art Style 

Joyce Pensato crafted vibrant and dynamic large-scale portraits of cartoon characters and comic-book heroes. Her technique, seemingly frenetic, involved the deliberate layering of bold linear strokes, rapid splattering, and frequent erasures. While her subjects ranged from iconic figures like Batman, The Simpsons, and Mickey Mouse to Felix the Cat and Elmo from Sesame Street, her artistic influences encompassed Alberto Giacometti, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Philip Guston.  

Pensato primarily worked with shop-bought black and white enamel, occasionally incorporating charcoal and pastel for smaller-scale drawings. Her oversized murals, often taking weeks to complete, diverged from her usual studio-based, monochromatic style, as did her occasional bursts of color, particularly silver and gold.