Virginia Admiral
| Virginia Admiral | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Virginia Holton Admiral February 4, 1915 Oregon, United States |
| Died | July 20, 2000 (aged 85) New York City, New York, United States |
| Movement | Painter |
Virginia Holton Admiral or Virginia De Niro (February 4, 1915 – July 20, 2000) was an American painter and poet. She studied painting under Hans Hofmann in New York, and her work was included in the Peggy Guggenheim collection.
Admiral was born in Oregon, the daughter of Alice Caroline (née Groman), a school teacher, and Donald Admiral, a grain broker. Admiral was raised as a Presbyterian but later became an atheist during her adulthood. Her father had English, Irish, German, French, and Dutch ancestry, and her mother was of German descent. In 1920, she was residing in Danville, Illinois according to the census, with her parents and younger sister, Eleanor. By 1930, Virginia's parents had divorced and she was living with her mother and sister in Berkeley, California. While in Berkeley, her mother became a school teacher.
She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago under Hans Hofmann. In 1938, she worked on the Federal Art Project, in Oakland, California. While living in Berkeley, California, she had been part of an off-campus art and socialist and literary scene. Having traveled together from California to Greenwich Village, New York, Admiral was an intimate friend of poet Robert Duncan throughout the 1940s as well as other artists and writers in the Village scene. Among them was Anais Nin and Kenneth Patchen. With Duncan, she produced an issue of the magazine Epitaph (later renamed The Experimental Review).
Admiral, a painter, met Robert De Niro, Sr., an aspiring artist, at one of Hans Hofmann's painting classes in Provincetown, Massachusetts. They first moved into an loft apartment on E. 14th Street, then later to an apartment on 8th Street, and then settled into one on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. They married in December 1942. In August 1943, Virginia gave birth to their son, award-winning actor and director, Robert De Niro, Jr.
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