Léonie Guyer (born January 1, 1955 in New York City) is a contemporary artist known for abstract paintings, drawings and installations utilizing materials such as antique, vintage and handmade paper, marble remnants (or fragments), wood panels, and in site-based projects, walls and windows.

Early life and education

Guyer was born in 1955 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 ...

. She received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art

Institute An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can ...

Work

Guyer makes paintings, drawings, site-based work, and

artist books Artists' books (or book arts or book objects) are works of art that utilize the form of the book. They are often published in small editions, though they are sometimes produced as one-of-a-kind objects. Overview Artists' books have employed a ...

. Stephanie Snyder describes Léonie Guyer’s work as the following: “The richly layered, albescent grounds of Léonie Guyer’s most recent paintings are inspired, in part, by the creamy surfaces of ancient Greek white-ground vessels, by the work of painters such as

Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (), after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian (, also , ; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He is known for being ...

(1872–1944) and

Giorgio Morandi Giorgio Morandi (July 20, 1890 – June 18, 1964) was an Italian painter and printmaker who specialized in still life. His paintings are noted for their tonal subtlety in depicting simple subjects, which were limited mainly to vases, bottles, b ...

(1890–1964), and by natural materials such as milk, bone, and chalk. Guyer mixes her paints by hand from raw pigments, often restricting her palette to the “ancient” primary colors (iron oxides, yellow ochres, and mineral-based blues), in addition to various blacks and whites. This alchemical chromaticism allows Guyer to experience the physical and energetic properties of each material as directly and as sensitively as possible. Hand-mixing paint is an intimate, timeconsuming, and repetitive activity, resulting in modest batches that settle and cohere in accordance with the subtle variations of each particular admixture of pigment, linseed oil, and mineral spirit. No two batches are the same, recalling the ancient philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus’s observation that “You cannot step twice into the same river.” At the core of Guyer’s paintings and drawings is an awareness and embrace of life as a vulnerable and temporary moment within a measureless, universal continuum.” In his exhibition text, Anthony Huberman, the Director and Chief Curator of CCA Wattis Institute, writes: “Léonie Guyer makes

painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...

s and

drawing Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, ...

s. They consist mostly of abstract shapes, usually modest in scale, made with oil paint or pencil. In her mind, an artwork is a place where countless decisions are condensed and compacted together, and she works to intensify that concentration by keeping her paintings small and reduced down to their bare essentials: color,

surface A surface, as the term is most generally used, is the outermost or uppermost layer of a physical object or space. It is the portion or region of the object that can first be perceived by an observer using the senses of sight and touch, and is t ...

, and shape. She tries to do the most with the least. And yet to call her works “small” is misleading. Better would be to say that she makes “immeasurable” works of art, which doesn’t mean that they are epic in scale but simply that they are not meant to be measured.”

Awards and fellowships

Léonie Guyer received the following awards in her artistic career: Tosa Studio Award: Finalist Award (2018),

Foundation for Contemporary Arts The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), is a nonprofit based foundation in New York City that offers financial support and recognition to contemporary performing and visual artists through awards for artistic innovation and potential. It was ...

Emergency Grant (2012), Sites ReSeen Grant,

New York State Council on the Arts The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) is an arts council serving the U.S. state of New York. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell (1905–1996), ...

(2006), Fellowship, John Anson Kittredge Foundation (2002), Artist in Residence Grant,

California Arts Council The California Arts Council is a state agency based in Sacramento, United States. Its eight council members are appointed by the Governor and the state Legislature. The agency's mission is to advance California through arts, culture and creativi ...

(1997, 1996, 1995), Murphy and Cadogan, Fellowship in the Fine Arts, San Francisco Foundation (1987)

Selected exhibitions

Guyer has had solo exhibits at

Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts Established in 1998, the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts is a contemporary art center in San Francisco, California, US, and part of the California College of the Arts. It holds exhibitions, lectures, and symposia, releases publications, and ...

, SF; odium fati, SF; Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle; Lumber Room, Portland; and The Shaker Museum, Mt. Lebanon, NY and other venues. Other exhibitions include shows at UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Feature Inc., NYC, Peter Blum Gallery, NYC, Greg Kucera Gallery,

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, Lumber Room, Portland, OR, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, OR, Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, PLUSkunst, Düsseldorf, Germany and other venues.

Collections

Guyer's work is held in many permanent collections including: The

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Harvard University Modern Books & Manuscripts Collection, Reed College Art Collection,

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

Shaker Museum and Library The Shaker Museum and Library, officially known as Shaker Museum , Mount Lebanon, is a museum and research library concerned with the Shakers, a Protestant religious denomination founded in America by Ann Lee and her followers in 1774, and known m ...

, Stanford University Special Collections, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

Collaborative projects

Bill Berkson William Craig Berkson (August 30, 1939 – June 16, 2016) was an American poet, critic, and teacher who was active in the art and literary worlds from his early twenties on. Early life and education Born in New York City on August 30, 1939, Bil ...

(poetry) and Léonie Guyer (drawings). Not an Exit. Fairfax, CA: Jungle Garden Press, 2010
Franck André Jamme
(poetry) and Léonie Guyer (drawings). Mantra Box. Paris, France: Festina Lente, 2009

Teaching

Guyer has taught at the

San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately ...

California College of the Arts California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996 it opened a second campus in San ...

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

San José State University San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a public university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the oldest public university on the West Coast and the founding campus of the California State University (CSU) sys ...

and elsewhere. She lives and works in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Guyer, Léonie 1955 births Living people American women installation artists American installation artists Artists from New York City San Francisco Art Institute alumni 20th-century American artists 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American artists 21st-century American women artists San Francisco Art Institute faculty California College of the Arts faculty University of California, Berkeley faculty San Jose State University faculty Artists from San Francisco American women academics