Selina Trieff's Haunting Paintings Explore Mortality Through Figurative Icons

Selina Trieff, who died in January 2015 at age 81, created paintings featuring recurring figures like pilgrims, skeletons, angels, and farm animals arranged with iconic weight. Born in Brooklyn in 1934, she studied with Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko at Brooklyn College before working with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown beginning in 1953. Trieff spent her final years on Cape Cod with her partner Robert Henry, after decades living and working in New York's Meatpacking District while raising two daughters. From Hofmann, she learned about paint's physicality and developed a method where flat color areas and dimensional outlines create dynamic spatial tension. Her work combines modernist abstraction with figurative elements, often using gold leaf to create ritualistic, private icons. Trieff's self-portraits and mythological figures stare silently from the canvas, exploring mortality rather than martyrdom. In online videos titled "Selina Trieff Will Not Stop," she revealed that skeleton figures began as a way to maintain connection with a deceased friend. Her paintings achieve a hybrid quality of contained animation through meticulous attention to anatomy, skin, and expressive details.