Natalie Edgar Pavia (1932) is an American painter, art critic, and art historian whose work is closely connected to the history of Abstract Expressionism and the New York School. She studied painting at Brooklyn College with artists including Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt, and art history at Columbia University.
A former critic and staff writer for ARTnews (1959–1973), she has written extensively on modern and contemporary artists, including Robert Motherwell, Isamu Noguchi, Franz Kline, and Louise Bourgeois. Her painting practice, characterized by gestural abstraction and layered color, has been presented in solo exhibitions in New York and Italy.
Edgar edited Club Without Walls: Selections from the Journals of Philip Pavia (Midmarch Arts Press, 2007), a primary source on the formation of Abstract Expressionism and the Eighth Street Artists’ Club. She also organized archival materials relating to the Club and It Is magazine, now preserved within the Philip Pavia and Natalie Edgar archive at Emory University.
Her work brings together artistic practice, firsthand historical experience, criticism, and archival research, contributing to the documentation and reassessment of Abstract Expressionism and its cultural history.