Marcia Hafif, Painter of Monochromatic Works, Is Dead at 88

The artist Marcia Hafif in New York in 2015.CreditFergus McCaffrey, New York

Marcia Hafif, an artist best known for monochromatic paintings that explored the intersection of color, brush stroke, surface and light, died on April 17. She was 88.

In 1969, Ms. Hafif returned to the United States to attend the University of California at Irvine, where she earned a master of fine arts degree in 1971.

“I took those two years at U.C.I. to explore other things, to see, read, study, meet people, make work,” she told The Orange County Register in 2011. “That was extremely useful to me and changed my way of thinking about painting. Afterward, I went back to painting, but I was painting with a different view.”