Stern was born in Poland in 1932, 7 years before the outbreak of World War II. After surviving the Holocaust, a 16-year-old Stern moved to Paris and then to New York, where she met sculptor and future husband, Jan Peter Stern. While living in New York, Stern took art classes at the New York School for Social Research, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1965 the Sterns moved across the United States and settled in Santa Monica, California, a relocation that would lead to their breakthroughs as artists. The couple shared a symbiotic artistic relationship and exhibited together throughout their careers.
Career
Stern enjoyed early success in her watercolors, the techniques of which would heavily influence her later, more prolific acrylic works. During the 1970s she exhibited extensively on the east and west coasts, her work frequently drawing comparisons to that of contemporary Color Field artists Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler. On the relationship between Stern and Morris, one critic wrote: "… technique is all they share; the statements both artists make about the nature of paint differ. Louis' stains and pours often follow the force of gravity, so that paint appears to be drawn by its own pull towards the periphery of the canvas. Stern, on the other hand, makes acrylic seem weightless. It floats on white pristine canvas. It masses into rich areas with a spatial depth that Louis' works lack. It is forced onto the surface in many directions by an energy source beyond the paintings' edges." Stern is identified with pure abstract forms of semi-translucent color on large, unprimed canvases. Commentators have recurrently suggested her subject matter is floral, despite no affirmation of such from the artist. In 1974 Stern partook in the "Childe Hassam Purchase Award Exhibition" at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York. Her first solo exhibition, Irene Monat Stern: Paintings, took place at The Downtown Gallery in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1975. In 1981 the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden acquired three of her large-scale paintings. Stern's painting activity significantly declined in the 1980s as she became her husband's primary caregiver following his diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. In 2011 Stern contributed a chapter to the volume How We Survived– 52 Personal Stories by Child Survivors of the Holocaust. Stern is represented by Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York City.
