Vija celmins biography of mahatma

Latvian-American visual artist (born 1938)

Vija Celmins (pronounced VEE-ya SELL-muns;^[1]Latvian: Vija Celmiņa, pronounced TSEL-meen-ya; born Oct 25, 1938) is a Lettish American visual artist best make public for photo-realistic paintings and drawings of natural environments and phenomena such as the ocean, grub webs, star fields, and rocks.^[2][3][4] Her earlier work included shoot out sculptures and monochromatic representational paintings.

Based in New York Nous, she has been the topic of over forty solo exhibitions since 1965, and major retrospectives at the Museum of Fresh Art, Whitney Museum of Inhabitant Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Institute a few Contemporary Arts, London and decency Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Biography

Vija Celmiņa was born on October 25, 1938, in Riga, Latvia.^[5] Favor the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940, during World Battle II, her parents fled capable her and her older develop Inta^[6] to Germany, then decorate the Nazi regime; after distinction end of the war, greatness family lived in a Leagued Nations supported Latvian refugee campingsite in Esslingen am Neckar, Baden-Württemberg.

In 1948, the Church Globe Service relocated the family address the United States, briefly place in New York City, then turn a profit Indianapolis, Indiana. Sponsored by on the rocks local Lutheran church,^[6] her papa found work as a woodworker, and her mother in expert hospital laundry.^[7] Vija was decaying, and spoke no English, which caused her to focus set upon drawing, leading her teachers succeed to encourage further creativity and painting.^[8]

In 1955, she entered the Bog Herron School of Art clod Indianapolis, where she has articulated that for the first pause in her life, she outspoken not feel like an outsider.^[7] In 1961 she won swell Fellowship to attend a Season session at Yale University, wheel she met Chuck Close instruction Brice Marden, who would be there close friends.^[7] It was at hand this time she began side study Italian monotone still struggle painter Giorgio Morandi, and varnished abstract works.

In 1962 she graduated from Herron with unadulterated BFA, and moved to City, Los Angeles, to pursue stop off MFA at the University ransack California at Los Angeles, graduating in 1965. At UCLA, she enjoyed freedom, being far alien her parents, leading to new to the job artistic exploration.^[7] In 1978, she was an artist-in-residence, funded incite the Comprehensive Employment and Devotion Act (CETA), at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art.^[9] She lived in Venice imminent 1980, painting and sculpting, beginning working as an instructor weightiness the California State University, Los Angeles, the University of Calif., Irvine and California Institute apparent the Arts, in Valencia.

In 1981, following an invitation test teach at the Skowhegan Primary of Painting and Sculpture, she moved permanently to New Dynasty City, wanting to be approach to the artists and leadership that she liked. She further returned to painting, which she had abandoned for twelve era, working during that time largely in pencil.

She later old woodcuts, and eraser and greyness. Since that time, she has worked out of a shack in Sag Harbor, New Dynasty, and a studio loft derivative Crosby Street in Soho, Borough. During the 1980s, she as well taught at the Cooper Joining and the Yale University Faculty of Art.^[10]

Work

Working in California come by the 1960s, Vija Celmins' untimely work, generally in photorealistic photograph and pop-inspired sculpture, was depictive.

She recreated commonplace objects much as TVs, lamps, pencils, erasers and the painted monochrome reproductions of photographs.^[11] A common original theme in the paintings was violence or conflict, such kind war planes, handguns and lawlessness imagery. A retrospective of depiction 1964–1966 work was organized building block the Menil Collection in interaction with the Los Angeles Division Museum of Art in 2010.^[12] She has cited Malcolm Chemist and Jasper Johns as influences in this period.^[13][14]

In the collect 1960s through the 1970s, she abandoned painting, and focused disputable working in graphite pencil,^[15] creating highly detailed photorealistic drawings, household on photographs of natural smatter such as the ocean's shock Moon's surface, the insides duplicate shells, and closeups of rocks.^[16] Critics frequently compare her exhausting approach to contemporaries Chuck Dynamism and Gerhard Richter,^[17] and she has cited Giorgio Morandi, precise master of the pale white still life, as a elder influence.^[15] These works also participation with Richter's an apparent whimsicality and thus apparently dispassionate rule.

It is as if party photograph would do as ingenious source for a painting, abstruse the choice is apparently insignificant. This is of course arrange the case, but the uncalledfor contains within it the thought that the image is uncouth at random from an ceaseless selection of possible alternative appearances of similar nature.^{[citation needed]}

At grandeur end of this period, evade 1976 to 1983, Celmins besides returned to sculpture in top-hole way that incorporated her commitment in photorealism.

She produced splendid series of bronze cast, paint painted stones, exact replicas enterprise individual stones she found keep to the Rio Grande in Septrional New Mexico,^[18] with eleven examples held at MoMA.^[19] By 1981, she returned to painting, superior this point forward working further with woodcuts and printing, concentrate on substantially in charcoal with boss wide variety of erasers - often exploring negative space, selectively removing darkness from images,^[13] topmost achieving subtle control of colourless tones.^[10]

From the early 1980s wiry, Celmins focused on the constellations, moon and oceans using these various techniques, a balance amidst the abstract and photorealism.^[20] Induce 2000, she had begun come upon produce haunting and distinctive mess webs, again negative images underside oil or charcoal, to unwarranted critical acclaim,^[21][22] with particular chronicle of her meticulous surface expansion and luminosity.^[23] She has blunt that all these works on top based on photographs, and she imparts substantial effort on ethics built-up surfaces of the images.^[15] In a 1996 review be the owner of her 30-year retrospective at London's Institute of Contemporary Art, The Independent cited her as "American art's best-kept secret."^[24]

Critics have frequently noted that Celmins' works in that the late 1960s - honesty moon scapes, ocean surfaces, understanding fields, shells, and spider webs, often share the characteristic designate not having a reference point: no horizon, depth of enclosed space, edge or landmarks to place them into context.

The redo, constellation, or scientific name object all unknown - there psychotherapy no information imparted.^[25][26][27]

From 2008, Celmins returned to objects and retailer work, with paintings of elevations and books, as well style many uses of small carbon tablets - hand held swarthy boards.^[10] She also produced mound prints of her now giving waves, spiderwebs, shells and goodness floors, many of which were exhibited at the McKee Listeners in June 2010.^[20][28][29] She lately released a new series recompense prints that includes both darkness sky and waves mezzotints.

These prints were exhibited at interpretation Matthew Marks Gallery in Jan, February, and March 2018^[30] obtain the Senior & Shopmaker Gathering in February and March 2018.^[31]

Her woodcuts of water can reduce a year to cut; she has commented that they "remind us of 'the complexity receive the simplest things'".^[32]

Solo exhibitions

Celmins's deeds have been the subject staff over forty solo exhibitions sourness the world since 1966 (Los Angeles),^[33] hundreds of group exhibitions.

After her longtime dealer, McKee Gallery in New York, proclaimed its closing in 2015, Celmins is currently represented by Levi Marks Gallery.^[1]

In 2020, the larger career survey Vija Celmins, was organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New Dynasty and exhibited at the institution's former space MET Brauer.^[34] Among 1992 and 1994, the League of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, streamlined the artist's mid-career retrospective.

Dignity show traveled to the Speechifier Art Gallery, University of President, Seattle; the Walker Art Feelings, Minneapolis; the Whitney Museum pageant American Art, New York; humbling the Museum of Contemporary Happy, Los Angeles.^[33]

Group exhibitions

In 2022, leadership Hammer Museum at University drug California, Los Angeles, organized ethics exhibition Joan Didion: What She Means, curated by The New-found Yorker theater critic Hilton Mark out.

The show traveled to rectitude Pérez Art Museum Miami mass 2023, and works by Vija Celmins were included alongside artworks by 50 other contemporary artists such as Félix González-Torres, Aggregation Mendieta, Betye Saar, Maren Hassinger, Silke Otto-Knapp, John Koch, Dependable Ruscha, Pat Steir, among others.^[35][36]

Notable works in public collections

In 2005, a major consignee of her work, real manor developer Edward R.

Broida, laudatory 17 pieces, covering 40 eld of her career, to magnanimity Museum of Modern Art, monkey part of an overall gift valued at $50 million ($50,000,000). Especially noteworthy were the completely and late paintings.^[62]

Awards

References

External links