Lauretta Vinciarelli facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Lauretta Vinciarelli
Vinciarelli c. 1977
Born	1943 Arbe, Italy
Died	August 3, 2011 (aged 67–68) New York City, United States
Nationality	Italian
Alma mater	La Sapienza University, Rome
Occupation	Architect, artist, educator
Partner(s)	Donald Judd

Lauretta Vinciarelli (born 1943 – died August 3, 2011) was a talented artist, architect, and university professor. She was known for her unique watercolor paintings of imaginary buildings and spaces.

Early Life and Learning

Lauretta Vinciarelli was born in Arbe, Italy. Her family later moved to Rome, where she grew up. Her father was an organist at St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, and her mother was a teacher.

Lauretta studied architecture at Sapienza University of Rome. After finishing her studies, she became a licensed architect in Italy. She worked as an architect in Rome before moving to the United States in 1968. In 1993, she married Peter Rowe, who was also a respected architecture professor at Harvard University.

Lauretta Vinciarelli's Career

Teaching Architecture to Students

After moving to the U.S., Vinciarelli spent many years teaching architecture design. She taught at several well-known schools. These included Rice University in Houston, Texas, and the University of Illinois. She also taught at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Columbia University, and City College in New York.

Designing Buildings and Spaces

In the 1980s, Vinciarelli worked with Minimalist artist Donald Judd. Minimalism is a style of art that uses very simple shapes and colors. They worked together in New York City and in the American Southwest, especially in Marfa, Texas.

Marfa became a special place for them to explore new ideas in architecture. They created projects like the Marfa II Project in 1978. Vinciarelli used a careful method to combine basic parts of architecture and design. She wanted her designs to "form a fabric," meaning everything would fit together smoothly.

In 1984, Vinciarelli and Judd won a competition for Kennedy Square in Providence, Rhode Island. Their design was inspired by Vinciarelli's earlier work. This included a plan from 1977 for city gardens in southern Italy. In 1986, Vinciarelli received an Artists Fellowship in Architecture. This award came from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Creating Art with Watercolors

From the early 1980s until the end of her life, Vinciarelli made beautiful watercolor and ink paintings. These paintings showed imaginary architectural spaces. Her art has been studied by many experts.

Vinciarelli was part of a special group of artists called paper architects. These architects created amazing building designs mainly through drawings and paintings, rather than building them in real life. Other famous paper architects included John Hejduk and Aldo Rossi.

Vinciarelli's artwork showed strong and inspiring images of spaces. She used water elements in her paintings to show how light and reflections can change the feeling of a space. She once said that her painted architectural spaces were not meant to solve real-world building problems. Instead, they were about the feeling and idea of space itself.

Where Lauretta Vinciarelli's Art is Kept

Lauretta Vinciarelli's art is held in many private collections and museums. These include the International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA) at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Her work is also at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California.

A large collection of her work, including the bright Orange Sound series, is at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2015, an exhibition at MAXXI, a museum in Rome, featured a group of Vinciarelli's abstract watercolors. These were given to the museum by her family.

Museum and Archive Collections

Lauretta Vinciarelli's work is part of major collections around the world.

• A.A.M. Architettura Arte Moderna
  • Senza titolo (Untitled)
    • Made with mixed media on cardboard, 1975
    • Dimensions: each 44.5 x 57 cm
  • Hangar + Courtyard
    • Made with ink and tempera on tracing paper, 1980
    • Dimensions: each 39.5 x 64 cm
    • This is an architectural drawing.

• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
  • Atrium in Red, 1992
    • Made with watercolor and ink on paper.
    • Dimensions: 76.2 cm x 56.83 cm.
    • This is an architectural drawing.
  • Night #6, 1996
    • Made with watercolor and ink on paper.
    • Dimensions: 76.2 cm x 57.47 cm.
    • This is an architectural drawing.

• Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
  • Garden Structure; Untitled, 1986
    • Made with watercolor on heavy paper.
    • Dimensions: 34.29 x 42.55 cm.

• National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
  • Long Horizon II [center], 1995
    • Dimensions: 74 x 102.7 cm.
  • Long Horizon II [left], 1995
    • Dimensions: 74 x 104 cm.
  • Long Horizon II [right], 1995
    • Made with watercolor and pastel over graphite on heavy woven paper.

• Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
  • Orange Sound, project, 7 watercolor series, 1999
    • Made with graphite and color ink on paper.
    • Dimensions: each 76.2 x 55.9 cm.

• International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA)
  • Lauretta Vinciarelli Art Work
    • 11 untitled tempera drawings on boards.
    • These are part of the IAWA Small Collections.

Exhibitions of Lauretta Vinciarelli's Work

Lauretta Vinciarelli's art has been shown in many solo and group exhibitions. These shows took place in galleries and museums around the world.

Solo Shows

• 1978: Lauretta Vinciarelli: Projects 1973–78. Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies; Wave Hill, New York, N.Y.
• 1980: Lauretta Vinciarelli: Processo Metafora. Progetti e disegni, 1974-1980. A.A.M. Architettura Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy.
• 1981: Lauretta Vinciarelli: Projects 1980–81. Young Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, Illinois.
• 1982: Lauretta Vinciarelli: Projects. Princeton University Graduate School of Design, Princeton, New Jersey.
• 1992: Lauretta Vinciarelli: Red Room, Water Enclosures, and Other Unfolding Spaces. GSAPP, Columbia University, N.Y.
• 1992: Lauretta Vinciarelli: Rotte Raume. Museum fur angewandte Kunst, Vienna, Austria.
• 1996: Spatial Reverberations: Watercolors by Lauretta Vinciarelli. National Building Museum, Washington.
• 1997: Reflections: Watercolors by Lauretta Vinciarelli. Gund Hall Gallery, Harvard Graduate School of Design.
• 1999: Incandescence: Watercolors by Lauretta Vinciarelli. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA.
• 2002: Lauretta Vinciarelli: Intimate Distance. Henry Urbach Architecture, New York City.
• 2012: Clear Light: The Architecture of Lauretta Vinciarelli. City College of New York, N.Y.

Group Shows

• 1975: Goodbye Five: Work by Young Architects. Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, New York, N.Y.
• 1975: Architectural Studies and Projects. Museum of Modern Art, New York, N.Y.
• 1977: Drawing for A More Modern Architecture. The Drawing Center, New York, N.Y.
• 1977: Women in American Architecture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective. Brooklyn Museum, N.Y. and Hayden Gallery, MIT.
• 1978: Architectural Drawings. Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, CA.
• 1979: Elements of Architecture. Sperone Westwater Fisher Gallery, New York, N.Y.
• 1980: Art by Architects. Rosa Esman Gallery, New York, N.Y.
• 1980: Creation and Recreation: America Draws, Museum of Finnish Architecture, Helsinki, Finland.
• 1980: Desire As Archetype: The Chicago Tribune Tower Competition/ Late Entries.
• 1980: Young Architects: an Exhibition at Yale School of Architecture. Gallery of Art and Architecture, New Haven, CT.
• 1985: Project for Palmanova. Venice Biennale of Architecture: 3rd International Exhibition of Architecture.
• 1991: Contemporary Architectural Drawings. Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery and Arthur Ross Gallery at Columbia University, NY.
• 1997: Summer Group Show. Max Protetch Gallery, New York, N.Y.
• 2001: Inside Out: New Perspectives on the Heinz Architectural Center’s Collection. The Heinz Architectural Center Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA.
• 2002: Luminous Void Volume of Light, series (2001). Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City.
• 2002: Italian Architecture Signs Since The War. Dalla Collezione Francesco Moschini, A.A.M. Architettura Arte Moderna, Florence, Italy.
• 2003: Visions and Utopias: Architectural Drawings from the Museum Of Modern Art. New York, NY; Museum of Finish Architecture, Helsinki, Finland.
• 2004: Watercolor Worlds : Lauretta Vinciarelli, et al. Dorsky Gallery, New York.
• 2004: Envisioning Architecture: Drawings from the Museum of Modern Art, New York. National Building Museum, Washington, D.C.