Discipline: Visual Art

Clover Vail

Discipline: Visual Art
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1989
More: www.clovervail.com
Clover Vail was born in Switzerland to American parents and fled the German invasion of France with her family to the U.S., crossing into Spain and then Portugal for a flight from Lisbon to New York. We arrived in New York in 1941 and both my mother and father, though they were divorced by then, were part of a very close expatriate group of artists that included Marcel Duchamp. We remained in New York until the war was over and returned to France in 1947. I endured the French ècole communal in Paris and American Army schools in Germany for four years and finally returned to America in 1951 to live with relatives. I eventually attended Bennington College and studied with Paul Feeley and Tony Smith and received a master’s degree from Hunter College. My first exhibitions in New York City were in the mid-70s at AIR Gallery, the radical and still successful gallery started by a group of women artists in 1972. Located in the then newly founded Soho it was a unique experiment providing an exhibition space for women artists during a time in which the works shown at commercial galleries were almost exclusively by male artists.

Studios

New Hampshire

Clover Vail worked in the New Hampshire studio.

New Hampshire Studio, originally named Peterborough Studio, was given to MacDowell by Mr. and Mrs. William Schofield, Mrs. H. A. Chamberlain, Mrs. Andrew Draper, and Miss Ruth Cheney. The studio was renamed in 1943. The Gilbert Verney Foundation established an endowed maintenance fund in 1990, and a bequest in memory of MacDowell Fellow Victor Candell underwrote the…

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