Book Signing with Debra Lennard // “Marcia Marcus: I Paint What I Like”

Published on the occasion of a major new career retrospective, Marcia Marcus: I Paint What I Like provides a much-needed, extensive monographic exploration of a strikingly original artist.

Headstrong and wry, Marcia Marcus (1928–2025) was a fiercely original artist whose work challenges typical understanding of post-war American art. Rejecting mainstream abstraction, Marcus spent five decades painting what compelled her: languorous male nudes, parenthood, great style—subjects her peers rarely explored—all rendered in her distinctive cool and poised hand. Undaunted by New York’s male-dominated art world, she was a vivid presence in downtown Manhattan and Provincetown, pioneering as one of the first women to stage a Happening. Through decades of self-portraiture, she boldly affirmed her own creative voice and upended narrow expectations of gender with wit and defiance.

This volume illuminates Marcus’s multifaceted significance: innovative artist of post-war New York, creator of radically assertive self-portraiture, and essential forerunner of figurative painting today.

Debra Lennard is an independent scholar and associate curator, Hayward Gallery Touring, London.

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Marcia Marcus: I Paint What I Like.

Edited by Debra Lennard
Preface by Jane Barrell Yadav and Kate Prendergast
Introduction by Melissa Rachleff
Essay by Debra Lennard
Coda by Brandon Brame Fortune
Contributions by Martha Edelheit, Mimi Gross, Chantal Joffe, and Alex Katz

Publisher: D Giles Limited, London GilesLtd.com in association with Marcia Marcus Media Corp., Yonkers, New York.