Mary Orwen (1913–2005) was an American artist known for paintings that appeared to be completely abstract but were usually inspired by objects in the natural world. Her goal, as she put it, was to "find an echo in the visible world of the order which I feel exists beneath the complexity of life."^[1] She spent much of her career painting and teaching art in and around Washington, D.C., and was a principal co-founder of an artists' cooperative called Jefferson Place Gallery,^[2] that one critic called "a gallery for serious creative work of progressive character" and that Orwen said would demonstrate that the city was not just a provincial backwater.^[3][4][5]

Brought up in Brooklyn, Orwen attended the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights and then Mount Holyoke College from which she graduated in 1935.^[6][7] Between 1935 and 1937, she took art classes at the Art Students League, where she studied with Reginald Marsh, Harry Sternberg, and William Zorach. After that, she studied at The New School where she studied with Camilo Egas.^[8] She spent much of 1937 studying fresco and painting at the University of Florence.^[9] The following two years she received a pair of scholarships from the Guggenheim Foundation to pursue a type of abstract painting that was then called nonobjective art.^{[10][note 1]}

In 1940, 1941, and 1942 Orwen participated in exhibitions held at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (predecessor of the Guggenheim Museum).^[9][13] During the early war years, she continued to paint and later was employed as an economic analyst by the War Department.^[9] During this period, she divided her time between Washington, D.C., and her parents' home in Westport, Connecticut.^{[14][15][16][17]} Following her marriage to Gifford P. Orwen, she moved to Washington, D.C., where he was then working for the State Department.^[18] Within a few months of her arrival, she became an associate in the art department at American University, then considered to be (as a critic at the time stated) "the principal experimental center for the visual arts in Washington".^[19] She and thirteen other art department associates participated in an exhibition at the city's United Nations Club in September 1948.^[20] In May of the following year, she took first prize and was named "Artist of Tomorrow" in an exhibition at the Whyte Gallery in Washington, DC, and in November won a prize in an exhibition of Washington area artists at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.^[21][22] In 1950, she was given a solo exhibition in the gallery of Washington's Dupont Theater. She showed seventeen paintings in oil, gouache, tempera, and ink in this, her first solo show.^[10] A year later, she showed with fourteen other painters in a show at the Whyte Gallery and again won a prize at an exhibition of local artists at the Corcoran, this time, a second prize for a drawing.^[23][24] She was named "Artist of Tomorrow" In 1952, she participated in group exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Dupont Theater gallery, and the National Museum of Natural History, the latter having been sponsored by the Society of Washington Artists.^[9][25] 1953 proved to be an unusually busy year for her. She participated in group shows in the Dupont Theater gallery, the Garden Gate gallery in Georgetown and was given a solo exhibition in the Watkins Gallery of American University.^[26][27][28]

Over the next few years, Orwen's paintings continued to appear in group exhibitions in Washington galleries, including Watkins Gallery (1955), Playhouse Gallery (1955, 1958)), Corcoran Gallery (1955), and Franz Bader Gallery (1956).^[29][30][31] She also took prizes in exhibitions staged by the Society of Washington Artists in 1956 and 1957.^[32][33]

In the latter year, she joined with four other area artists and an arts administrator to establish a cooperative art gallery. In addition to Orwen, the founders were William Calfee, Robert Gates, Helene McKinsey, Ben Summerford, and Alice Denney.^[5] The four artists were all associated with the American University art department. Denney had been a student there but had decided to become an arts promoter rather than an artist.^[34] She became the gallery's director and artists' agent. Orwen and Denney signed the lease and all five signed an agreement to fund the project.^[5] The founders invited other area artists to join the project including Lothar Brabansky, Colin Greenly, Kenneth Noland, George Bayliss, and Shelby Shackleford. Over the next five years, Orwen would participate in three solo and seventeen group shows at the gallery.^[35] In 1958, the Evening Star's art critic called the gallery a place for "serious creative work of progressive character".^[3] Orwen's exhibits there drew critical praise and attracted buyers.^[36][37][38]

In 1961, Orwen and her family moved to West Virginia, and she, then an art instructor at Bethany College, participated in an exhibition with twelve other art teachers at Grove City College in nearby Pennsylvania.^[39] Despite the move, she also continued to exhibit in at the Jefferson Place Gallery (a solo in 1967) and at the Baltimore Museum of Art (in a major review called "Twenty Years of Washington Art" in 1970).^[9] Not long after the move to West Virginia, Orwen and her family moved again, this time to Geneseo, New York, and she began to show in that vicinity, starting with a show at the annual Western New York art exhibition held in March 1964 at the Albright–Knox Art Gallery. There, a painting of hers called "Sea Chant No. 4" was one of many prize winners.^[40] Over the next twenty-five years, she participated in group and solo exhibitions at commercial galleries as well as museums and other non-profit organizations in the Rochester region.^[9][41][42] Notable exhibitions include solo shows at the Oxford Gallery in Rochester (1974), the Rochester Branch of the American Association of University Women (1983), and the Arts and Cultural Council for Greater Rochester (1991).^[9][42][43] In 1978, Watkins Gallery of American University gave her a solo exhibition. The following year and in 2001 she contributed paintings to group exhibitions in New York commercial galleries (David Findlay, 1999, and Gary Snyder, 2001).^[9] In 2019, Cody Gallery, Marymount University, presented an exhibition of Orwen's paintings. The show was the second in a series called "Women of Jefferson Place Gallery". Others in the series included Jennie Lea Knight and Hilda Thorpe. Installation views from the Orwen exhibit are shown above.

Orwen died at home on October 14, 2005.^[44]

Orwen was born in New York on August 11, 1913.^[44] Her birth name was Mabel Claflin Ryan.^{[53][54][note 2]} Her parents were Edgar Edwin Ryan (1882–1952) and Alice Clarkson Ryan (born 1886).^[6] Egar Ryan was a successful merchant, a shoe salesman who became president of a chain of shoe stores.^[55] Alice Ryan was active in the kinds of civic events that got reported in the society pages of local newspapers.^[57] Orwen had twin younger brothers, David and Donald, born in 1930.^[6]

During World War II, she was employed as an economic analyst for an intelligence branch of the War Department.^[9] In 1947, she married Gifford P. Orwen (1909–1997), who was then working for the State Department and had been in Army intelligence during the war.^[18] Gifford came from Rochester, New York. Educated at the University of Rochester, Cornell University, he did post-doctoral research at the University of Perugia, and the University of Strasbourg. He taught Romance Languages at Cornell prior to World War II, and, after his service in Army intelligence and at the State Department, taught Russian in Bethany College. He ended his career at the State University of New York in Geneseo as chair of the foreign languages department.^[58] The couple had one son, Michael, born in 1951.^[58]