JEANNE LAWSON BULTMAN. Modern Art Activist (90), one of the last pivotal participants in the American Abstract Expressionist art scene of the 1950s and 1960s, died at her summer cottage in Provincetown, MA on Thursday evening, December 18. It was in a cottage next to her late husband, Fritz Bultman's, studio that Jeanne would spend her last year, surrounded by some of her art collection and her devoted caregivers.
Jeanne was an active volunteer delivering Meals on Wheels to seniors in her distinctive 1973 beige Jeep Wagoneer until she was in her late 80s. In her earlier years, she was instrumental in the creation of Cape Cod National Seashore, defending First Amendment Rights, and the founding of the Fine Arts Work Center.
From the time of her marriage to Abstract Expressionist Fritz Bultman (one of the twenty-eight prominent New York School artists dubbed "The Irascibles" in the seminal 1950 article and historic photograph published by Life Magazine) on Christmas Eve 1943 at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, until 2007, Jeanne Bultman shepherded her husband's artistic career; and after his death July 20, 1985, his legacy. While she considered herself as a mere bystander, not an artist, yet she was a noted stained glass maker whose largest commission (1981) was the 54 foot long Bultman Stained Glass Mural at Kalamazoo College consisting of more than 3000 pieces of glass duplicating the adjacent collages created by her husband.
The New York art scene was a sharp contrast to her small-town Midwestern roots where she came from one of the founding families of Hastings, Nebraska. Her only artistic endeavor consisted of singing in the choir of the First Presbyterian Church. After her graduation from high school in 1936 she set off for New York.
In New York she graduated from the Traphagen Fashion School at 808 Seventh Avenue in 1939, completing an eight-month course in Clothing Construction. Soon after her graduation the statuesque blonde landed roles modeling and dancing in the chorus of nightclub revues in Chicago, Montreal and New York.
It was the Russian painter, Igor Pantuhoff whom she credited with playing a pivotal role in transforming her from a showgirl into a vital participant in the emerging American abstract expressionist scene. It was in the summer of 1941 that Pantuhoff, on the rebound from Lee Krasner, who had dumped him for Jackson Pollack, loaned her his convertible so she could drive to Cape Cod for a stint as an artist's model in Hans Hofmann's (1880-1966) studio in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In 1935 Hans Hofmann, an intimate of Braque and Picasso, had come to Provincetown to open a summer painting academy on Miller Hill Road. Over the years his school attracted such artists as Lee Krasner, Myron Stout and Giorgio Cavallon. It was there the twenty-four- year old Jeanne Lawson met the artist Hans Hofmann described as his most talented student, Fritz Bultman.
Fritz Bultman, the son of a funeral director in New Orleans, LA., went to Munich in 1935 to study abstract expressionism and architecture at the age of sixteen,. Finding that Hitler had closed the Bauhaus, he chose to study art at the Munich Preparatory School. Fritz Bultman was eighteen when he had his transformational meeting with Hans Hofmann in 1937 in New York. The young New Orleanian had spent the previous year living boarded for one year in Munich with Miz Hofmann, the wife of artist Hans Hofmann.'s wife. with whom he had boarded in Munich 1936-1937. (Hofmann had been "exiled" to the USA by Hitler's policies since 1932 for being a proponent of "degenerate modern art".) Miz gave the young Bultman a portfolio of her husband's work to bring to him in New York. Fritz Bultman was eighteen when he had his transformational meeting with Hofmann in 1937 in New York. He followed Hans Hofmann to the New Bauhaus in Chicago 1937-1938, and then would continue to study with Hofmann in Provincetown and New York from 1938-1941.
Writer Donald Windham, best man at their wedding, recalls that Louella Brach Lawson, her widowed mother, was dubious of her free-spirited daughter's choice of a mate, yet helped the couple buy the land in Provincetown across from Hofmann's studio in 1944, sending them the $1000 she had put aside for her daughter's traditional Hastings' society wedding. The couple soon transformed the ramshackle one room building atop the overgrown hill into a year round home. In 1945 the artist Tony Smith, whom Fritz had met in Chicago at the New Bauhaus in 1937, designed and helped construct Bultman's distinctive multi-sided vaulted studio on the property.
In the art world, dominated by strong egos, Jeanne Bultman was masterful at empowering her brilliant, but 'irascible' husband to stay true to his vision. Early it in her marriage it was she who finally called a halt to the free-loading of playwrights, actors and writer who camped out in their tiny cape cod home so that Fritz could get back to being an artist.
In the early 1950's Fritz and Jeanne would return from Provincetown to New York, forging one of the most successful partnerships in New York's modern art scene. Jeanne's Midwestern pluckiness served to offer Fritz, who suffered from illness throughout his life, the stability he required to function as an artist. She worked as a seamstress and model for fashion designer Charles James to make ends meet. As Fritz did not drive, she was his chauffeur, his rock and his button-sew-er . When Fritz Bultman obtained a Fulbright Fellowship in 1964-1965 to study in Paris, she studied at the Cordon Bleu. which led her to a job working as an assistant to cookbook author Michael Field.
In 1963 during the height of the Civil Rights struggles, the Bultmans enlisted the support a group of prominent New York artists, curators and critics including Robert Motherwell and Dore Ashton to create an important modern art collection for a small black college in Jackson, Mississippi, Tougaloo College, at a time when the color line precluded blacks from visiting white museums. By the 1980s and 1990s Jeanne Bultman would once again become active in the preservation of the collection when she noticed valuable pieces being auctioned by the board of the college.
Jeanne Bultman is survived by two sons, Anthony Frederick Bultman IV of Covington, LA and Ellis Johann Bultman of New Orleans, LA; five grandsons Emerick Bultman of New Orleans, Grayson and Daniel Hirshhorn Bultman of Metairie, LA, and Gwyther and Tristan Bultman of New York City; and two great grandchildren, Samantha and Andrew Bultman of Metairie, La.
The Gately-McHoul Funeral Home on Harry Kemp Way in Provincetown is in charge of the funeral arrangements. A funeral mass will be held at St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church on Prince Street in Provincetown. Interment to follow at the Pine Grove Cemetery in Truro.
In lieu of flowers please make donations to:
The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Inc., 24 Pearl St
Provincetown, MA 02657
Office of the Council on Aging, Grace Gouveia Building, 26 Alden Street, Provincetown, MA 02657
St. Peter the Apostle Church, 11 Prince Street, Provincetown, Ma 02657.
