Manon Cleary

Cleary taught at the University of the District of Columbia for 30 years. She was beloved by her students and by many of the local artists in Washington, D.C. She was a collector of local art and supporter of local artists. She was a long time Member of the Arts Club of Washington. After a couple years in Washington, D.C., she moved into Beverly Court Apartments—now Beverly Court Cooperative. It was the epicenter of art in the 1970s for Washington, D.C. and Cleary was the star. Beverly Court housed artists such as Allan Bridge, Yuri Schwebler, Jonathan Meader, and Angelo Hodick. Cleary would host dinner parties for the building and a communal living of sorts took place. The doors to apartments were often open and artists collaborated on art together. Beverly Court was bought by its residents in 1979, after most of the artists had left, and it became the first cooperative in Washington, D.C. It was during this time, in 1981, that Cleary was briefly married to a man named Tommy, who was an young art student from Denmark. They were divorced about a year later.

Cleary passed away in 2011 at the age of 69. She suffered for many years from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She was survived by her husband, F. Steven Kijek and her twin sister, Shirley Cleary-Cooper. Her work is held by many museums all over the country, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Brooklyn Museum. She has held numerous solo exhibitions and been a part of many exhibitions worldwide.

Cleary met her second husband, F. Steven Kijek, a dancer, in Baltimore at a party after a gallery opening. When they met, he supposedly stripped naked in the middle of a crowd and asked if she would like to paint him; they were married in 2001. Cleary was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 1999 and was experiencing pulmonary failure. This was brought on by a smoking habit and inhaling toxic fumes from her paint. Her doctor gave her just two years to live in 2001. The disease forced Cleary to retire and her weight dropped to just 80 pounds. She would need to use an oxygen tank and breathing tube for the remainder of her life. Even with all of these challenges, Cleary still found a way to create new art; she created a series titled "Breathless" that featured her face, with breathing tubes, pressed up against the glass of a copy machine. Cleary passed away in 2011, shortly after her 69th birthday. She died her apartment at Beverly Court, where she had lived for 40 years.

In 1996, Cleary experience a traumatic event while traveling abroad. Cleary visited Kazakhstan that year on a good-will art trip and was there to lecture about art. Cleary was attacked by a Kazakh artist, with whom she had only a brief meeting. The attack shook Cleary and she left the country quickly in a state of denial. It took Cleary several months to start to examine her feelings and work through them. She ended up creating an evocative series titled, "The Rape Series" after the event. The series features paintings of Cleary's face, shaped in horror and pain, with red paint splatterd over the canvas. The paintings are the most physical of Cleary's portfolio, with some of the canvases burned or slashed. Cleary's attacker was invited to Washington, D.C. for a show on Kazakhstan art in 1998, but was luckily denied entry into the United States. The news was hard to take for Cleary, but she believes because of an affidavit she signed with the State Department upon returning from Kazakhstan, he was turned away.

Another theme that is very apparent in Cleary's work is sexuality. In some of her art it is frank and bold, like her series of large oil paintings from the early 1990s that studied male genitalia. (In 1997, one of her paintings at an erotic art auction was featured on an episode of HBO's Real Sex.) Other studies of sexuality are more subtle and abstract. Cleary painted many flowers that were said to be in the vein of Georgia O'Keeffe. Cleary's open exploration of sexuality creates a distraction for the viewer. The more flagrant the sexuality, the more Cleary conceals herself in her work.

Cleary studied and received her bachelor's at Washington University, in her hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. She then went to Temple University, where she received her master's degree from the Tyler School of Art. Shortly after, Cleary moved to Washington D.C in 1970 where she would work at the University of the District of Columbia as a professor for thirty years. Cleary also used her role as professor to support local artists.

Cleary went to undergraduate school at Washington University in St. Louis and received her degree in 1964. Cleary's education there was very mechanical and traditional, as she was only taught about technique, not content. Cleary struggled at first with the teaching style and she was one of the few artists drawing figures regularly. Cleary took to drawing highly erotic images; the images gave her confidence and left her professors struggling to critique. After graduating Cleary applied late to graduate programs and happened upon an opportunity to spend her first year of graduate school in Rome, for the Tyler School of Art. While in Rome, Cleary studied the work of Caravaggio and was remained inspired by his work for much of her career. After a year in Rome, Cleary finished her graduate studies and received her MFA in 1968, at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Cleary moved to upstate New York, where she briefly taught at a state university in Oswego. The experience there was not one to remember, so she moved to Washington, D.C. in 1970, where she would remain for the rest of her life.

Manon Cleary was born in 1942 in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA.