brief biography

Born in Baltimore, MD, Marjorie Grigonis has lived and worked in her studio in Philadelphia for the past 25 years. She attended George Washington University and The Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC, receiving her MFA from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1965. Grigonis taught art for 14 years in the Fine Arts departments of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ; Middlesex College in Edison, NJ, the College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, and for one year in the Art Department of The Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr.

Ms. Grigonis was one of the founders of the Amos Eno Gallery in NYC in 1973, and is now Co-director of the 3rd Street Gallery, a co-operative gallery in Old City, Philadelphia. In 1992 Grigonis was the recipient of a residency at the Vermont Studio School; in ‘95 she was awarded first prize in painting in Art in Pennsylvania ‘95 at the State Museum in Harrisburg; in ‘09 awarded the Van Sciver prize in the annual juried show at The Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia.

She has spent part of every year for the last three decades on the rocky coast of Maine, and has visited other countries whenever possible. The varied environments and traveling itself have influenced her work. She has repeatedly visited Japan, France, Germany, Mexico, China and Italy. A trip to Morocco and the Sahara was the inspiration for several paintings.  Seeing more of the western USA is a current plan.

Ms. Grigonis’s solo exhibtions include 3rd Street Gallery, Philadelphia, the Newark (NJ) Museum, Maine Maritime Academy(Castine, ME), Amos Eno Gallery (NYC) and the inaugural show for the Monsanto Gallery at Lander College (SC). She has shown at the State Museums of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina, Woodmere Art Museum, Mint Museum (Charlotte, NC) and various private galleries. Her paintings  and prints are in the collections of the University of NC, the Medical University of SC,  Pennsylvania Hospital, Wyeth Ayerst International, Inc., and in numerous private collections,  both in the US and in France, England and Germany.  Her work, drawings, paintings, prints, has always been abstract, the styles varying over four decades.