Maybelle Stamper

Maybelle Stamper, born Mabelle Richardson in Dublin, New Hampshire, was an American printmaker, painter, and watercolorist known for her enigmatic, deeply introspective imagery. She studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Art Students League of New York before teaching at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where she established the institution’s printmaking program.Stamper developed a highly personal form of modernism that drew on Surrealism, Expressionism, Constructivism, and Symbolism. Her works combine abstract forms, dreamlike figures, natural imagery, invented writing, and spiritual symbolism. Frequently accompanied by poetic titles or handwritten reflections, her compositions explore consciousness, mysticism, existence, and the relationship between the physical and spiritual worlds.During the mid-1940s, Stamper withdrew from Cincinnati’s established art community and settled permanently on Captiva Island, Florida. Living and working in relative seclusion, she devoted herself to art, meditation, reading, gardening, and writing. She primarily produced lithographs, often reworking individual impressions with additional printing, drawing, color, and text, making many of them effectively unique. Stamper referred to her artworks as “songs,” comparing visual expression to music as a means of communicating ideas beyond words.Although she rarely exhibited or sold her work during her later life, Stamper achieved institutional recognition and maintained a friendship with fellow Captiva artist Robert Rauschenberg, with whom she shared her printing press. Her work has been the subject of museum exhibitions and is held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, and the Cincinnati Art Museum.