Lee Bontecou (January 15, 1931 – November 8, 2022) was an American sculptor and printmaker and a pioneer figure in the New York art world. She kept her work consistently in a recognizable style, and received broad recognition in the 1960s. Bontecou made abstract sculptures in the 1960s and 1970s and created vacuum-formed plastic fish, plants, and flower forms in the 1970s. Rich, organic shapes and powerful energy appear in her drawings, prints, and sculptures. Her work has been shown and collected in many major museums in the United States and in Europe.
Early life and education
From the time Bontecou attended high school, she found herself interested in sculpture; "I avoided everything that was commercial art. I avoided having to make posters, and I avoided all of these... it was just not interesting to me. But I was always drawing at home, and making little clay stuff and little figures, little – anything that I could get my hands on. And I did enjoy the clay."
Bontecou attended Bradford Junior College (now
Bradford College
Bradford College is a further and higher education college in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, with approximately 25,000 students. The college offers a range of full and part-time courses from introductory level through to postgraduate l ...
) in
Haverhill, Massachusetts
Haverhill ( ) is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. Haverhill is located 35 miles north of Boston on the New Hampshire border and about 17 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. The population was 67,787 at the 2020 United States Cen ...
for her general education and then attended the
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists.
Although artists may stu ...
from 1952 to 1955, where she studied with the sculptor
William Zorach
William Zorach (February 28, 1889 – November 15, 1966) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and writer. He won the Logan Medal of the arts. He is notable for being at the forefront of American artists embracing cubism, as well as for ...
."Lee Bontecou" ,
The Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
, Retrieved December 22, 2014. She also spent the summer of 1954 at 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 t ...
in Maine, where she learned to weld. She received a
Fulbright scholarship
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 ...
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus.
Being New York City's first publ ...
.
Bontecou's work was deeply affected by
WWII
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. Many of her sculptures were emotional responses to war. Describing her own work, Bontecou said ..." I was angry...all of those- all the ones with the teeth- it was a thing of what that war was." Both her parents joined the war effort. Her mother wired transmitters for submarine navigation and her father sold gliders for the military. Later her husband, Bill Giles, would be a medic in the
Korean War
, date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
. Growing up, she would spend summers with her grandmother in
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia
Yarmouth is a town in southwestern Nova Scotia, Canada. A port town, industries include fishing, and tourism. It is the terminus of a ferry service to Bar Harbor, Maine, run by Bay Ferries.
History
Originally inhabited by the Mi'kmaq, the regi ...
, where she developed a love of the natural world. She had an older brother, Hank.
Career
Bontecou was best known for the sculptures she created in 1959 and the 1960s, which challenged artistic conventions of both materials and presentation by hanging on the wall. They consist of welded steel frames covered with recycled canvas and industrial materials (such as conveyor belts or mail sacks) and other found objects. Her best constructions are at once mechanistic and organic, abstract but evocative of the brutality of war. Art critic
Arthur Danto
Arthur Coleman Danto (January 1, 1924 – October 25, 2013) was an American art critic, philosopher, and professor at Columbia University. He was best known for having been a long-time art critic for ''The Nation'' and for his work in philosophi ...
described them as "fierce", reminiscent of 17th-century scientist Robert Hooke's ''Micrographia'', lying "at the intersection of magnified insects, battle masks, and armored chariots...”.Danto 2004 She exhibited at Leo Castelli's art gallery in the 1960s, alongside
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art. He is well known for his depictions of the American flag and other US-related top ...
,
Frank Stella
Frank Philip Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Stella lives and works in New York City.
Biography
Frank Stella was born in M ...
, and
Robert Rauschenberg
Milton Ernest "Robert" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combines (1954–1964), a group of artwor ...
. One of the largest examples of her work is located in the lobby of the
David H. Koch Theater
The David H. Koch Theater is a theater for ballet, modern and other forms of dance, part of the Lincoln Center, at the intersection of Columbus Avenue and 63rd Street in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Originally ...
at
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...
in New York City, which was commissioned by the architect
Philip Johnson
Philip Cortelyou Johnson (July 8, 1906 – January 25, 2005) was an American architect best known for his works of modern and postmodern architecture. Among his best-known designs are his modernist Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut; the pos ...
.Trachtman, Paul "Lee Bontecou's Brave New World" Smithsonian Magazine, Retrieved December 24, 2014. From the 1970s until 1991 she taught in the Art Department at
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus.
Being New York City's first publ ...
.
She continued to teach through the 1990s, while spending time in Pennsylvania. She moved to
Orbisonia, Pennsylvania
Orbisonia is a borough in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 428 at the 2010 census.
__TOC__
Geography
Orbisonia is located in southeastern Huntingdon County at (40.243345, -77.893362), on the northeastern side ...
full-time in 1988 where she continued to work. There she maintained a vigorous studio practice, but showed infrequently. She was brought back to public attention by a 2003 retrospective co-organized by the
Hammer Museum
The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...
in Los Angeles and the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary ...
, that traveled to the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York City in 2004. The retrospective included both work from her public, art-world career and an extensive display of work done after retreating from the public view. Bontecou's work was also included in the Carnegie International 2004-5 exhibit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2010, the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
presented a retrospective of Bontecou's work entitled ''All Freedom in Every Sense.'' In 2014, her drawings were exhibited in ''Lee Bontecou: Drawn Worlds'', organized by
The Menil Collection
The Menil Collection, located in Houston, Texas, refers either to a museum that houses the art collection of founders John de Menil and Dominique de Menil, or to the collection itself of approximately 17,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawing ...
, which traveled to the
Princeton University Art Museum
The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 113,000 works o ...
. Her work was also included in ''Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947-2016'' at Hauser Wirth & Schimmel in 2016.
In 2017, a major exhibition of Bontecou's drawings and sculpture, including a site-specific installation entitled ''Sandbox,'' a collaboration between Bontecou and Joan Banach, was organized by the
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
The Kunstmuseum Den Haag is an art museum in The Hague in the Netherlands, founded in 1866 as the Museum voor Moderne Kunst. Later, until 1998, it was known as Haags Gemeentemuseum, and until the end of September 2019 as Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. I ...
. The exhibition was curated by Joan Banach and Laura Stamps, and accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by Hannibal (Dutch) and Koenig Books, London (English). The catalogue contains new essays on Lee Bontecou by Laura Stamps, Curator of Modern Art at The Gemeentemuseum, Joan Banach, and Jeremy Melius, with an introduction by Gemeentemuseum Director, Benno Tempel.
Perspective
In the 1960s, Bontecou's work was hailed for its unique position in between painting and sculpture. Sculptor
Donald Judd
Donald Clarence Judd (June 3, 1928February 12, 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism (a term he nonetheless stridently disavowed).Tate Modern websit"Tate Modern Past Exhibitions Donald Judd" Retrieved on February 19, 2009. In ...
wrote that her work "asserts its own existence, form and power. It becomes an object in its own right." The openness, autonomy, and engineering processes central to her work, were embraced by the
Feminist Art Movement
The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of contemporary ar ...
in the 1970s and her use of cavities and holes has been read as female genitalia, and the related, central core imagery. It is an association the artist denied. Her work has been characterized by references to the synergy between nature and fiction, resulting naturalistically rendered creatures, with grotesquely morphed features.
Techniques and materials
Bontecou worked with many materials, such as metal, paper, plastic, and fibreglass. She also worked with unconventional materials and discovered new techniques. In her drawings, she developed a process in the late 1950s of using an
oxyacetylene torch
Principle of burn cutting
Oxy-fuel welding (commonly called oxyacetylene welding, oxy welding, or gas welding in the United States) and oxy-fuel cutting are processes that use fuel gases (or liquid fuels such as gasoline or petrol, diesel, ...
to produce a carbon spray from the flame, resulting in an "airbrushed" look and deep saturated blacks that she took to her sculptural work.
Personal life and death
Bontecou was married to the artist William Giles with whom she had a daughter, Valerie.
Bontecou died in Florida on November 8, 2022, at the age of 91.
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...
.
A picture of Bontecou working in her studio, taken by Italian photographer
Ugo Mulas
Ugo Mulas (28 August 1928 – 2 March 1973) was an Italian photographer noted for his portraits of artists and his street photography.
Life and work
Mulas began his studies in law in 1948 in Milan, but left to take art courses at the Brera Fine ...
in 1963, was used as the cover art for Spoon’s 2007 album ''
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
''Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga'' is the sixth studio album by American rock band Spoon. It was first released on July 10, 2007, through Merge Records and Anti-. It received critical acclaim and appeared on several year-end album lists. The album debuted at nu ...
''. The apparently completed sculpture on the right in the aforementioned photograph is now in the collection of the
Honolulu Museum of Art
The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single col ...
Mary Beth Edelson
Mary Beth Edelson (born Mary Elizabeth Johnson) (6 February 1933 - 20 April 2021) was an American artist and pioneer of the feminist art movement, deemed one of the notable "first-generation feminist artists." Edelson was a printmaker, book art ...
.
Public collections
Bontecou's work can be seen in a number of public institutions, including:
*
Cleveland Museum of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...
*
David H. Koch Theater
The David H. Koch Theater is a theater for ballet, modern and other forms of dance, part of the Lincoln Center, at the intersection of Columbus Avenue and 63rd Street in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Originally ...
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
*
Glenstone
Glenstone is a private contemporary art museum in Potomac, Maryland, from downtown Washington, D.C. The museum's exhibitions are drawn from a collection of about 1,300 works from post-World War II artists around the world. It is the largest priv ...
*
Kunstmuseum Den Haag
The Kunstmuseum Den Haag is an art museum in The Hague in the Netherlands, founded in 1866 as the Museum voor Moderne Kunst. Later, until 1998, it was known as Haags Gemeentemuseum, and until the end of September 2019 as Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. I ...
, (
The Hague
The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...
)
*
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art
The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art ("The Johnson Museum") is an art museum located on the northwest corner of the Arts Quad on the main campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Its collection includes two windows from Frank Lloyd W ...
at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
*
Honolulu Museum of Art
The Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts) is an art museum in Honolulu, Hawaii. The museum is the largest of its kind in the state, and was founded in 1922 by Anna Rice Cooke. The museum has one of the largest single col ...
*
Menil Collection
The Menil Collection, located in Houston, Texas, refers either to a museum that houses the art collection of founders John de Menil and Dominique de Menil, or to the collection itself of approximately 17,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawing ...
*
Moderna Museet
Moderna Museet ("the Museum of Modern Art"), Stockholm, Sweden, is a state museum for modern and contemporary art located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, opened in 1958. In 2009, the museum opened a new branch in Malmö in t ...
(Stockholm)
*
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen () is an art museum in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The name of the museum is derived from the two most important collectors of Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniël George van Beuningen. It is located at ...
(Rotterdam)
*
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary ...
*
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...
*
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
*
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.The Richard M. Ross Art Museum (
Delaware, OH
Delaware is a city in and the county seat of Delaware County, Ohio, United States. Delaware was founded in 1808 and was incorporated in 1816. It is located near the center of Ohio, is about north of Columbus, and is part of the Columbus, Ohio m ...
)
*
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...
*
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
*
University of Michigan Museum of Art
The University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan with is one of the largest university art museums in the United States. Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alumni Memorial Hall ori ...
*
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...
"Lee Bontecou" Walker Art Center, Retrieved December 22, 2014.
*
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
References
Bibliography
* Applin, Jo (June 2006) "This threatening and possibly functioning object: Lee Bontecou and the Sculptural Void", ''Art History'' 29:3, pp. 476–503
* Banach, Joan (February 2017) "A Peripatetic Atlas of the Sandbox", ''Lee Bontecou'', exhibition catalogue, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. London: Koenig Books.
*Danto, Arthur (2004) "A Tribe Called Quest", ''
The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'', September 27, 2004, p. 40-43
*Dreishpoon, Douglas (1996) "From a curator's point of view: making selections and forging connections: Lee Bontecou, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Robert Morris, Robert Smithson / Douglas Dreishpoon", Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina at Greensboro,
*Molesworth, Helen Anne (2005) "Part Object Part Sculpture", Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University
* Krygier, Irit Career Interrupted on artnet *Hadler, Mona (2007) "Lee Bontecou: Plastic Fish and Grinning Saw Blades," Woman’s Art Journal,Vol XXVIII, No. 1 (Spring/Summer, 2007), pp. 12–18
*Hadler, Mona (1994) "Lee Bontecou's 'Warnings'," Art Journal,Vol.LIII,No. 4(Winter,1994), pp. 56–61.
*Rosenberg, Karen. "Sketching When the Pencil Requires Ignition Lee Bontecou:Drawn Worlds an Artist's Other Side." The New York Times July 24, 2014: n. pag. Print.
Union List of Artist Names
The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) is a free online database of the Getty Research Institute using a controlled vocabulary, which by 2018 contained over 300,000 artists and over 720,000 names for them, as well as other information about artist ...