Brenda Zlamany is an American artist best known for portraiture that combines
technique with a
postmodern conceptual approach.
[Schwabsky, Barry]
"Brenda Zlamany / E. M. Donahue Gallery,"
''Artforum'', February 1993, p. 99–100. Retrieved September 27, 2019.[Cotter, Holland]
''The New York Times'', August 9, 1996, p. C23. Retrieved September 27, 2019.[Kuspit, Donald]
''The End of Art''
New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005, p. 183.[Rose, Joshua. "Brenda Zlamany: The Art of Seeing," ''American Art Collector'', April 2007, p. 140.] She gained attention beginning in the 1990s, when critics such as ''Artforum''
's
Barry Schwabsky
Barry Schwabsky (b. Paterson, New Jersey, in 1957) is an American art critic, art historian and poet. He has taught at the School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute, New York University, Yale University, and Goldsmiths College, among others.
Art ...
,
Donald Kuspit
Donald Kuspit (born March 26, 1935) is an American art critic and poet, known for his practice of psychoanalytic art criticism. He has published on the subjects of avant-garde aesthetics, postmodernism, modern art, and conceptual art.
Educatio ...
and
John Yau identified her among a small group of figurative painters reviving the neglected legacies of portraiture and classical technique by introducing confrontational subject matter, psychological insight and social critique.
[Cirincione, Janine. "Brenda Zlamany at E. M. Donahue," ''Cover'', March 1991, p. 17.][Ebony, David. "Brenda Zlamany at E. M. Donahue," ''Art in America'' February 1993, p. 110.][Schwabsky, Barry]
"Catherine Howe,"
''Artforum'', February 1996, p. 84.[Yau, John. ''Brenda Zlamany'', New York and Los Angeles: Stefan Stux and Muse X, 1998.] Her early portraits of well-known male artists, such as
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very l ...
and
Leon Golub, reversed conventional artist/sitter gender and power dynamics;
[Morgan, Robert C. "Individual Issues: Bald Guys, Dead Birds…" ''Cover'', October 1994, p. 38.][Melrod, George. "Openings (Review)," ''Art & Antiques'', October 1996, p. 30.][Wei, Lilly]
"The Great American (Male) Nude,"
''ARTnews'', December 2010, p. 82–5. her later projects upend the traditionally "heroic" nature of portraiture by featuring underrepresented groups and everyday people.
[Luce, Jim]
"American Mother-Daughter Duo Sketch 888 Taiwanese Faces,"
''Huffington Post'', July 3, 2012. Retrieved September 27, 2019.[Cohen, David]
"Brenda Zlamany at the Derfner Judaica Museum, Bronx,"
''Art Critical'', October 17, 2017. Retrieved September 27, 2019. Zlamany has exhibited internationally at institutions including the Smithsonian
National Portrait Gallery,
Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei
The Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (MoCA Taipei; ) is a museum of contemporary art, located in Datong District, Taipei, Taiwan.
History
The museum building was built during the Japanese rule in 1921 for what later became Jiànchéng Element ...
,
National Museum, Gdańsk
The National Museum in Gdańsk ( pl, Muzeum Narodowe w Gdańsku), established in 1972 in Gdańsk (although the history goes back the third quarter of 19th century), is one of the main branches of Poland's national museum system.
History
Its main ...
, and
New-York Historical Society
The New-York Historical Society is an American history museum and library in New York City, along Central Park West between 76th and 77th Streets, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The society was founded in 1804 as New York's first museum. ...
.
[ Hickey, Dave. "The Lost World," ''Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Exhibition 2006'', Washington, DC: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/ University of Washington Press, 2006, p. 15, 76.][Shu, Catherine]
"Simultaneous Interpretation,"
''Taipei Times'', February 22, 2012.[Kuspit, Donald. ''New Old Masters/Nowi Dawni Mistrzowie'', Gdansk: National Museum in Gdansk, p. 92–6. 2007.] Her work has been recognized with a
Fulbright Fellowship
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...
,
Pollock-Krasner Foundation
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing financial assistance to individual working artists of established ability. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expression ...
Award, and commissions from
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
,
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...
and ''The New York Times Magazine'';
[Stein, Sarah]
"First Female Ph.D.s Memorialized,"
''Yale Daily News'', April 6, 2016. Retrieved September 27, 2019.[U.S. Department of State]
"Brenda Zlamany,"
Fulbright Scholar List. Retrieved September 27, 2019.[Pollock-Krasner Foundation]
"Brenda Zlamany,"
Artists. Retrieved September 27, 2019. it belongs to public collections such as the
Neuberger Museum of Art
Neuberger Museum of Art is located in Purchase, New York, United States. It is affiliated with Purchase College, part of the State University of New York system. It is the nation's tenth-largest university museum. The museum is one of 14 sites o ...
and
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, or VMFA, is an art museum in Richmond, Virginia, United States, which opened in 1936. The museum is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Private donations, endowments, and funds are used for the s ...
.
[Virginia Museum of Fine Arts]
"Brenda Zlamany,"
Collections. Retrieved September 27, 2019. Zlamany is based in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, New York.
[Gellman, Lucy]
"Brenda Zlamany Comes Home,"
''Arts Paper'', January 8, 2019. Retrieved October 30, 2019.
Early life and career
Brenda Zlamany was born in 1959 in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
and raised in
Queens
Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...
, New York.
After a family move to Connecticut, she applied to and was accepted into the
Educational Center for the Arts, an arts high school in
New Haven
New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...
; she attended from 1974 to 1977, living on her own in various informal arrangements.
During that time, she worked for a city program painting murals, illustrated a children's book,
[Garskof, Bert]
''The Canbe Collective Builds a Be-hive''
Dandelion Press, 1977. Retrieved October 30, 2019. and was invited to attend the
Yale
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...
College Before College Program, where she studied printmaking, painting and anthropology.
[Castellanos-Monfil, Román]
"Portrait of Yale's First Seven Women Ph.D.’s Unveiled,"
''Yale News'' April 6, 2016. Retrieved September 27, 2019. Following high school, she studied at
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...
(BA, 1981),
the
Tyler School of Art
The Tyler School of Art and Architecture is based at Temple University, a large, urban, public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Tyler currently enrolls about 1,350 undergraduate students and about 200 graduate students in a wid ...
in Rome,
S. W. Hayter's Atelier 17 in Paris, and the
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an artists residency located in Madison, Maine, just outside of Skowhegan. Every year, the program accepts online applications from emerging artists from November through January, and selects 65 ...
.
[McGill, Douglas C]
"Personal Art and the Skowhegan Experience,"
''The New York Times'', September 2, 1984, Sect. 2, p. 6. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
In 1984, Zlamany took advantage of a Jerome Foundation Fellowship and moved to New York City, working as a master printer with artists such as
Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel (born October 26, 1951) is an American painter and filmmaker. In the 1980s, he received international attention for his "plate paintings" — with broken ceramic plates set onto large-scale paintings. Since the 1990s, he has been ...
,
Vija Celmins
Vija Celmins (pronounced VEE-ya SELL-muns;Hilarie M. Sheets and Randy Kennedy (September 24, 2015)''New York Times''. lv, Vija Celmiņa, pronounced TSEL-meen-ya) is a Latvian American visual artist best known for photo-realistic paintings and dr ...
and
Sol LeWitt
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (September 9, 1928 – April 8, 2007) was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism.
LeWitt came to fame in the late 1960s with his wall drawings and "structures" (a term he pref ...
, and making etchings at the
Bob Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.
[''The New Yorker''. "Brenda Zlamany," ''The New Yorker '', November 30, 1992, p. 26.] After moving to
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Williamsburg is a Neighborhoods in Brooklyn, neighborhood in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn, bordered by Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Greenpoint to the north; Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Bedford–Stuyvesant to the s ...
, she began painting and attracting attention with animal still lifes.
[Kozik, K. K. "Heavy Meditations," ''Cover'', April 1993, p. 14.] Between 1984 and 1994, she was featured in solo exhibitions at
Hallwalls
Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (aka Hallwalls) is a non-profit art organization located in Buffalo, New York. Since 1974, Hallwalls has shown and shows the work of contemporary artists of diverse backgrounds who work in film, video, literature ...
and E. M. Donahue Gallery (New York), Sabine Wachters Fine Arts (Brussels) and Galerie Quintessens (Utrecht),
[Devolder, Eddy. "Brenda Zlamany: Une histoire presque sans histoires," ''Avancées'', November 1993, p. 31.][''Stadsblad''. "Eigenzinnige Diertaferelen Brenda Zlamany in Quintessens," ''Stadsblad'', March 30, 1993.] in group shows at
White Columns
White Columns is New York City’s oldest alternative non-profit art space. White Columns is known as a showcase for up-and-coming artists, and is primarily devoted to emerging artists who are not affiliated with galleries. All work submitted is ...
,
Art in General
Art in General was a non-profit contemporary art exhibition space known for its vibrant and ground-breaking projects as a formidable and longstanding New York City alternative space, focused on giving meaningful resources and opportunities to ar ...
and
Artists Space, and alongside artists including
Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman (born December 6, 1941) is an American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives near Galisteo, New Mexico.
Life and work ...
and
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...
, in shows at
Jack Tilton
John Havemeyer Tilton Jr (April 25, 1951 – May 6, 2017) was an American art dealer, based in New York City.
He was born in Littleton, New Hampshire, the son of a father who had studied art at Yale University, designed Christmas cards, and serve ...
and Blum Helman.
[McGovern, Adam. "Detritus," ''Cover'', September 1990, p. 17.][Stein, Deidre. "Bestiary / Blum Helman," ''ARTnews'', December 1993, p. 133.] In subsequent years, Zlamany has had solo exhibitions at the Stux
[Maxwell Douglas F. "Brenda Zlamany at Stux Gallery," ''Review'', December 1, 1998, p. 16–17.] and Jessica Fredericks
galleries (New York), the Fine Arts Center (UMass) (2001)
[Yau, John. "Double Portraits of Two Portraits,]
''Brenda Zlamany: Color Study''
Amherst, MA: Fine Arts Center, University of Massachusetts, 2002. Retrieved September 27, 2019. and Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (2012),
and appeared in group shows at the
Museum of Contemporary Art Denver
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA Denver), in Denver, Colorado, was founded in 1996 as the first dedicated home for contemporary art in the city of Denver. For seven years, MCA Denver occupied a renovated fish market in Sakura Square in lower dow ...
, National Portrait Gallery, and several European museums.
[Késenne, Joannes. ''Het oorkussen van de Melancholie'' (catalogue), Ghent: Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 2000, p. 42.][Ebony, David]
"David Ebony's Top 10 Most Memorable Artworks of 2015,"
''Artnet'', December 23, 2015. Retrieved October 2, 2019. She continues to live in Williamsburg with her daughter, Oona.
Work and reception
Critics note Zlamany's portraiture for its conceptual slant, postmodern interrogations of the male gaze, traditional subject matter, beauty and representation, and Old Master technique.
John Yau and others connect her work, in sensibility if not style, back to figurative modernists such as
Alice Neel,
Otto Dix
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with Geor ...
and
Ivan Albright
Ivan Le Lorraine Albright (February 20, 1897 – November 18, 1983) was an American painter, sculptor and print-maker most renowned for his self-portraits, character studies, and still lifes. Due to his technique and dark subject matter, he is of ...
, contemporary painters like Vija Celmins, Chuck Close,
Gregory Gillespie and
Alex Katz
Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints.
Early life and career
Alex Katz was born July 24, 1927, to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of an émigré who ha ...
that integrate elements of abstraction into representational work, and postmodern artists such as
John Currin
John Currin (born 1962) is an American painter based in New York City. He is best known for satirical figurative paintings which deal with provocative sexual and social themes in a technically skillful manner. His work shows a wide range of in ...
,
Elizabeth Peyton and
Lisa Yuskavage
Lisa Yuskavage (1962) is an American artist who lives and works in New York City. She is known for her figure paintings that challenge conventional understandings of the genre. While her painterly techniques evoke art historical precedents, her ...
who have ushered in new, critical and democratic forms of portraiture in recent decades.
[Finkelstein, Alix. "New Directions in Children's Portraiture," ''Fine Art Connoisseur'', November–December 2009, p. 39–42.][Grant, Daniel]
"The Modern Portrait: Is It Worth the Price to Get Yourself Painted?"
''Observer'', May 9, 2018. Distinguishing her from artists that appropriate or parody classical technique, Donald Kuspit placed Zlamany amid a tendency he called "new Old Masterism" that sought "to restore the beauty lost to avant-garde innovation."
[Kuspit, Donald]
"Going, Going, Gone,"
''Artnet'', September 16, 1999. Retrieved September 27, 2019. Other reviewers, such as ''The New York Times
Holland Cotter
Holland Cotter is an art critic with ''The New York Times''. In 2009, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
Life and work
Cotter was born in Connecticut and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his A.B. from Harvard College in 1970, wh ...
, have invoked painters such as
Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...
,
Zurbarán and
Chardin in describing Zlamany's handling of color, surface and paint application.
[Cohen, Mark Daniel. "Brenda Zlamany at Stux Gallery," ''Review'', December 1, 1998, p. 14–16.]
Early animal still lifes
Zlamany first attracted notice for meticulously rendered paintings of animal carcasses (birds, blowfish, snakes, sharks, iguanas), isolated and floating ambiguously in dark, painterly abstract fields (e.g., ''Shark Head #2'', 1992).
She began this work in the mid-1980s as a way to connect to visceral experience and elements of art practice—painting, craft, beauty—that she felt women were discouraged from pursuing.
Reviewers noted her mastery of academic glazing techniques, delicate sense of color and texture, and paint application suggestive of both Old Master and
Abstract Expressionist
Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...
technique;
[''The New Yorker''. "Brenda Zlamany," ''The New Yorker '', December 21, 1998, p. 16, 18.] in psychological terms, they described the paintings as "disquietingly seductive,"
[Condon, Elisabeth. "Small, Really Small, Tiny," ''New Art Examiner'', March 1993, p. 32–3.] vaguely allegorical, icon-like contemplations of life, death, desire and spirituality.
[Sweet, Christopher. ''Fallen Idylls: American Figurative Painting'', New York: P.P.O.W., 1994.][Ebony, David. "Brenda Zlamany at Jessica Fredericks," ''Artnet'', November 20, 1996.][Hewett, Heather. "In Memory of Pleasure: John Michael Kohler Arts Center," ''Art Papers'', September–October 1997, p. 74.][Heisler, Eva. "'New York Noir' / Allez les Filles," ''Dialogue'', May–June 1995, p. 22.] Janine Cirincione wrote that they "teeter on the edge of abstraction and representation, old master bravura and postmodern theory, between the seductive and the gruesome," with freewheeling art historical borrowings that challenged both traditional pictorial values and contemporary negations of representational work.
Barry Schwabsky likewise noted the work's conceptual preference for investigating materiality and illusionism and art's "half-feared, half-desired" fascination with representation and beauty over realism.
In a later series, Zlamany painted posed, live snakes that emphasized linear decoration, pattern and male sexuality while subverting traditional cultural associations of snakes with the feminine.
Portraiture
In 1992, Zlamany painted her first human portrait and exhibited it alongside animal still lifes, interested in how the out-of-fashion genre would be received.
Positive response inspired her 1994 show, "Twelve Men and Twelve Birds," a deadpan pairing of dead bird and artist portraits (including Chuck Close,
Glenn Ligon
Glenn Ligon (born 1960, pronounced Lie-gōne) is an American conceptual artist whose work explores race, language, desire, sexuality, and identity.Meyer, Richard. "Glenn Ligon", in George E. Haggerty and Bonnie Zimmerman (eds), ''Gay Histories a ...
,
Gary Stephan).
[Gilsoul, Guy. "Une portraitiste d’aujourd’hui," ''Le vif / L’express'', March 31, 1995, p. 89.] Writers described them as terse, moody, glowing likenesses that emerged from velvety black, reflective backgrounds and emphasized composition, surface and volume rather than personality or photographic reproduction.
[''The New Yorker''. "Brenda Zlamany," ''The New Yorker '', October 17, 1994, p. 29.][Levin, Kim. "Brenda Zlamany, Voice Choices," ''Village Voice'', September 27, 1994.][Herfield, Phyllis. "Brenda Zlamany: / E.M. Donahue," ''The New York Review of Art'', December 1994, p. 21.][Devolder, Eddy. "Brenda Zlamany at Sabine Wachters," ''Flash Art'', October 1995, p. 121.] Her 1995 show at Sabine Wachters featured portraits of the gallery's other artists—generally middle-aged, bald, male conceptual artists—that Guy Gilsoul called meticulously painted, inaccessible "mixtures of attraction, and repulsion, fascination and aversion."
In conceptual terms, critics such as
Robert C. Morgan
Robert C. Morgan (born 1943) is an American art critic, art historian, curator, poet, and artist.
Biography
Robert C. Morgan received his M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1975 and his Ph.D. in art education f ...
deemed this work a provocative deconstruction that coaxed "exemplars of art world virility"
into a passive role in order to glimpse male reality and sexual and power dynamics, reversing centuries of objectification of female subjects.
[Pozzi Lucio. "Che ve ne sembra dell’ America? Lettera da New York di Lucio Pozzi. L’artista e il suo doppio," ''Il giornale dell’arte'', December 1994.] John Yau described them as possessing a "disturbing eroticism" sealed off in dark anonymous space and embalming glazes that dissolved the subjects' power.
In the late 1990s and 2000s, Zlamany, continued painting portraits of male artists and other public figures,
[Muchnic, Suzanne. "In the eye of the collector," ''Los Angeles Times'', January 26, 2007.] while expanding her practice to include a wider range of figurative subjects
and a series of Southeast Asian landscapes.
[Tabios, Eileen. "How Painting Transcends Painting," ''Reviewny'', February 15, 2001.] Her multi-paneled "Color Studies" works configured monochrome panels and portraits (of Chuck Close,
Evander Holyfield, and John Yau) mixed figuration and abstraction, riffing on modernist color theory, rectangles (e.g., the boxing ring), negative space, and Close's use of repetition and the grid.
[Korotkin, Joyce B. "The Figure: Another Side of Modernism," ''NY Arts'', December 2000, p. 16–17.] They emphasized the
minimal nature of Zlamany's work, which had long eschewed architecture and landscape elements and iconographic cues in favor of composition, proportion, ground color and manner of representation as means of conveying narrative or psychological content.
During this time, Zlamany also produced portraits of artists
Leonardo Drew
Leonardo Drew is a contemporary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He creates sculptures from natural materials and through processes of Redox, oxidation, burning, and decay, Drew transforms these objects into massive sculptures that critique so ...
,
David Humphrey,
David Hockney
David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists o ...
, and Alex Katz among others; the latter two were National Portrait Gallery competition selections.
In 1998, Zlamany painted portraits of her pregnant sister and two sets of self-portraits, one nude and one in profiled poses recalling works by
della Francesca; her 2007 show "Facing Family" featured portraits of her parents and daughter.
[Schwabsky, Barry]
"The Rustle of Painting,"
''Lacanian Ink'', Volume 9, 1995, p. 47–57; also in ''The Widening Circle: Consequences of Modernism in Contemporary Art'', Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997. Critics such as Donald Kuspit continued to note her confrontation with representational conventions and Old Master technique and devices in these works and the later ''Self-Portrait with Oona nursing'' (2003–4), a stark contemporary rendering of the Madonna and Child motif.
They also noted her ability in these works to create narrative, context and inner presence.
"The Itinerant Portraitist"
Zlamany's international, multiyear project, "The Itinerant Portraitist" (2011– ), explores portraiture focused on nontraditional subjects: indigenous communities in Taipei, orphaned Emirati girls, taxicab drivers in Cuba, and nursing home residents in the Bronx.
[Jones, Mar]
"A Portrait a Day—and Back in the Day: A Studio Visit with Brenda Zlamany,"
''Art Critical'', December 14, 2015. Retrieved September 27, 2019. The series began with a Fulbright Grant-supported project in which she painted 888 watercolor portraits from direct observation of people in remote Taiwan, accompanied by her daughter, Oona, who is fluent in Mandarin;
it was realized in the multimedia installation, "888: Portraits in Taiwan" (exhibited in Taipei and New York, 2012).
In 2017, Zlamany painted 100 elderly residents of the Hebrew Home in the Bronx using a ''
camera lucida
A ''camera lucida'' is an optical device used as a drawing aid by artists and microscopists.
The ''camera lucida'' performs an optical superimposition of the subject being viewed upon the surface upon which the artist is drawing. The artist s ...
''; that work was exhibited at the
Derfner Judaica Museum and documented in the collaborative video, ''100/100'' (2019, with composer
Aaron Jay Kernis
Aaron Jay Kernis (born January 15, 1960) is a Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning American composer serving as a member of the Yale School of Music faculty. Kernis spent 15 years as the music advisor to the Minnesota Orchestra and as Dir ...
), which played several film festivals and won the Best Documentary Short prize at the Greenpoint Film Festival.
[River Spring Health]
"Brenda Zlamany: 100/100,"
September 3, 2017. Retrieved September 27, 2019.
Portrait commissions
Zlamany has received portrait commissions from individuals, ''The New York Times Magazine'', and institutions such as the World Bank and Yale University, among others.
She produced portraits of Osama bin Laden (cover),
[Danner, Mark. "Taking Stock of the Forever War," (Portrait of Osama bin Laden), ''The New York Times Magazine'', September 11, 2005, cover.] Slobodan Milosevic and Mirjana Marković,
[Harden, Blaine. "The Unrepentant," (Portrait of Slobodan Milosevic and Mirana Markovic), ''The New York Times Magazine'', January 20, 2002, p. 24.] Marian Anderson,
[Norman, Jessye]
(Portrait of Marian Anderson), ''The New York Times Magazine'', November 24, 1996, p. 59. Retrieved September 27, 2019. and Jeffrey Dahmer for special issues of The New York Times Magazine.
[Rosenbaum Ron. "Staring into the Heart of the Heart of Darkness," (Portrait of Jeffrey Dahmer), ''The New York Times Magazine'', June 4, 1995, p. 36–45.] She won a national competition for her first Yale commission, ''Yale's First Women Ph.Ds., 1894'' (2015), which commemorates the first seven women to earn Ph.D. degrees at the university.
The painting involved extensive research on the women and late-19th century costuming, hairstyles and objects; its composition was developed through the use of paper cutouts of the women in various poses and relationships.
''The Davenport Dining Room Scene'' (2018) is a two-canvas group portrait of a departing college dean among a mix of eight professors, students, and university employees of the university that he had formed friendships with during several decades at the school.
Collections and recognition
Zlamany has been recognized with a
Fulbright Fellowship
The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...
(2011), awards from the
Pollock-Krasner Foundation
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing financial assistance to individual working artists of established ability. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expression ...
(2006), Peter S. Reed Foundation (2018) and
New York Foundation for the Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...
(1994), and artist residencies at Denali National Park, ADAH Abu Dhabi,
Ucross Foundation
The Ucross Foundation, located in Ucross, Wyoming, is a nonprofit organization that operates an internationally known retreat for visual artists, writers, composers, and choreographers working in all creative disciplines.
History
Founded in 1981 ...
,
Yaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.". On March  ...
,
MacDowell Colony
MacDowell is an artist's residency program in Peterborough, New Hampshire, United States, founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist and philanthropist Marian MacDowell. Prior to July 2020, it was known as the MacDowel ...
,
Millay Colony for the Arts, and
Triangle Arts Trust
The Triangle Network, formally known as the Triangle Arts Trust, is an international arts organisation that brings together artists from different countries to explore new ideas and expand the boundaries of their practice.
History
The Triangle N ...
, among others.
[Ucross Foundation]
"Visual Arts,"
Alumni. Retrieved September 27, 2019.[Yaddo]
"Visual Artists,"
Guests. Retrieved September 27, 2019.[MacDowell Colony]
"Brenda Zlamany,"
Artists. Retrieved September 27, 2019. Her work belongs to public art collections including those of the
Cincinnati Art Museum
The Cincinnati Art Museum is an art museum in the Eden Park neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1881, it was the first purpose-built art museum west of the Alleghenies, and is one of the oldest in the United States. Its collection of ov ...
, Neuberger Museum of Art,
Museum Kaneko, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...
, and
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...
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[Cincinnati Art Museum]
''Portrait #56 (Yo Picasso)'', Brenda Zlamany,"
Collection. Retrieved September 27, 2019.
References
External links
Brenda Zlamany official websiteBrenda Zlamany, The Itinerant Portraitistproject site
Studio Visit with Brenda Zlamany in ''Art Critical''
Interview with Brenda Zlamany ''Conversation Project NYC''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zlamany, Brenda
21st-century American painters
20th-century American painters
American women painters
Wesleyan University alumni
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alumni
1959 births
Living people
20th-century American women artists
21st-century American women artists
Painters from New York City