Description
In the 1960s Lee Bontecou was among those artists working at the forefront of the avant-garde. Donald Judd, the Minimalist critic and artist, was an early supporter of Bontecou's art, and her work attracted critical attention from major art publications. Along with Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and Frank Stella, Bontecou exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City. The Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum included her work in exhibitions of contemporary artists, and in 1964 a major relief was chosen by the architect Philip Johnson to decorate the entrance foyer of the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center. The construction now in the Empire State Plaza Art Collection was exhibited at the Whiney Annual in 1966. Bontecou was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1931. She studied with William Zorach and John Hovannes at the Art Students League in New York City from 1952 until 1955. In 1957 she was awarded a Fullbright Grant for study in Rome. Her early sculptures were made of plaster and bronze in the form of birds and animals. The interior wire structures of these early plaster pieces inspired the work that gained her recognition. She brought the interior structure to the outside, using reliefs of wire and rods that projected from a rectangular support, the arrangement of the forms frequently creating a dark central hole. Pieces of canvas and cloth were then attacched to the wire, forming three dimensional objects that projected from the wall. From these works, Bontecou developed more complicated reliefs, of which the piece in the Empire State Plaza Art Collection, dated 1966 is an example. Here the large central holes of her earlier work have been reduced to two small openings in the upper half of the composition. Reproduction of this image, including downloading , is prohibited without written authorization from the artist or by contacting the Curatorial Office of the Empire State Plaza Art Collection at 518-473-7521.
Details
- Work Date:
- 1966
- Location:
- South Concourse
- Dimensions:
- 8'-3" x 7'-7 1/2" x 25"
- Medium:
- Paint, fiberglass, and leather on welded metal framework