Pigskin Combat

Hedda Sterne'svisual knowledge of football comes largely from sports page photographs. Shehas noticed, as have football fans, that the published pictures are usuallyclassic compositions of powerful combat action. Her response to football'smotion and strife is seen in this painting, a large oil done in 1952 andexhibited at the time in the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York.

Hedda Sterne hasdared to catch one of the humorous sides of the game: football is a trafficjam. This amusing and telling view comes out in her painting in several ways.You can hear the officer's whistle; you can sympathize with the poorhit-and-run victim; you may decide for yourself whether the lights are red,green or yellow.

Miss Sterne hasoften been incorrectly classified with the fashionable New York abstractexpressionist school of painting. But her own individualism leads her to denymembership in any school. She is Mrs. Saul Steinberg and she lives in a NewYork home memorably embellished by her husband, whose incomparable linedrawings are the joy and sometimes also the despair of the art world.

ILLUSTRATION