Born in Oregon in 1915, Virginia Admiral was an American painter, poet, independent publisher and activist whose body of work straddled the fields of abstract and figurative art. Admiral settled in San Francisco, California in the 1930s, after studying painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. When the New Deal was enacted in 1933, she began working on the Federal Arts Project in Oakland and became entrenched in left wing politics and the San Francisco poetry scene.

Admiral fell in with a group of students, among them Robert Duncan. Together they published a single issue of a small-press magazine Epitaph, which developed into The Experimental Review. It was in 1940 that Admiral relocated to New York and enrolled at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in New York to study painting. Hofmann, a pivotal figure in the American Abstract Expressionist movement, would have a tremendous and immediate impact on Admiral during her early career as an abstract painter.

During her time with Hofmann, Admiral met her future husband, painter Robert De Niro, Sr., and they would later move into a loft apartment on 14th Street in Manhattan. Together they became a part of the New York School, an informal group of poets, painters, dancers, artists and musicians. While part of this vanguard circle, Admiral and De Niro, Sr. married and, in 1943, Admiral gave birth to their son, Robert De Niro.

Admiral’s artistic output caught the attention of Peggy Guggenheim, a champion of modern artists in both Europe and the States. In 1942, Admiral’s work was included in the Spring Salon for Young Artists at Guggenheim’s historic Art of This Century Gallery in Manhattan. That same year, the Museum of Modern Art purchased one of her early abstract artworks for $100.00, before many of Admiral’s compatriots received recognition from major museum collections. She entered the museum’s internationally renowned collection ahead of now-celebrated artists, including Jackson Pollock. Admiral received a solo exhibition at Guggenheim’s gallery in 1946 and was later included at the Venice Biennale in 1947, along with other prominent artists from the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

Admiral was deeply invested in politics during her lifetime, using her voice against the Vietnam War and to fight for the rights of the impoverished and working artists. She was a member of the Art Workers’ Coalition which promoted and fought for artists’ rights, the representation of female artists and artists of color, and reforms to the exhibition policies of major museums, most notably, the Museum of Modern Art.

Although Admiral did not paint for the entirety of her life, she painted across genres with a confident and a rich, complex palette. Both a figurative and abstract painter, Admiral drew inspiration from the friends with whom she surrounded herself, pictures from Life magazine, the fruits and vegetables in her kitchen and scenes on the streets of New York south of 14th street, where she lived until her death in 2000.