Eleanore Mikus (July 25, 1927 - September 6, 2017[1]) was an American artist who began painting in the late 1950s in the Abstract Expressionist mode.

By the early 1960s, she was creating monochromatic paintings with geometric patterns that according to Luis Camnitzer, “could be seen as conforming to the Minimalist aesthetic of the era while emphatically contradicting that style’s emotional distance and coldness.” [2]: 2  In 1969, she began painting simple, cartoon-like images in bold, colorful strokes that anticipated Neo-Expressionism of the early 1980s.

Later in New York City, she was making monochromatic works of black, white, and gray painted on uneven supports made from pieces of wood fitted together.

Thickly painted and sanded many times so that the color became like a skin molded by and integral to the bumpy structure beneath, these works, called Tablets are distinguished by a play of light and shadow on the surfaces that provides an organic sense of movement.

When asked to design an announcement for the show in N.Y.C., she spontaneously made seven folds on a sheet a paper, opened it up and handed it over as the flyer.

According to Robert Hobbs, she was “opting for [a] new freedom,” and began making cartoon-like paintings of boats, planes, trains, and dragons.

Hobbs associates them with similar directions taken by artists Alfred Leslie and Philip Guston, around the same time.

Mikus felt a close affinity to many artists who aspire to a purified aesthetic realm, such as Ben Nicholson, Paul Klee, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Piet Mondrian and Kasimir Malevich, and the drawings of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.

In 2004, Mikus received a Yaddow Grant in Drawing/Painting where she drew, folded, or painted 40 works of art during her two month stay.

During 2011, she was invited to be in a group show titled 43 Aspects of Drawing at the Rugby Art Gallery and Museum in Warwickshire, England.

Also in 2008 her work was shown in a group show titled Folded, Torn, Cut, Woven, and Pulled at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin.