Lee Bontecou facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Lee Bontecou
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Untitled, welded steel, canvas, black fabric, and wire, 1959
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| Born | January 15, 1931 Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.
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| Died | November 8, 2022 (aged 91) Florida, U.S.
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| Nationality | American |
| Education | Art Students League of New York |
| Known for | Sculpture, Drawing, Printmaking |
| Awards | Fulbright scholarship, Rome 1957–1958; Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, 1959 |
Lee Bontecou (born January 15, 1931 – died November 8, 2022) was an American artist. She was famous for her sculptures and prints. Lee Bontecou was a key figure in the art world of New York City. She kept her art in a special style that people could easily recognize. She became very well known in the 1960s.
Bontecou made abstract sculptures in the 1960s and 1970s. Later, she created plastic art shaped like fish, plants, and flowers. Her drawings, prints, and sculptures often show rich, natural shapes and strong energy. Her artwork has been displayed and collected by many big museums in the United States and Europe.
Contents
Early Life and Learning About Art
From high school, Lee Bontecou was interested in making sculptures. She said she didn't like commercial art like posters. Instead, she loved drawing and making small figures from clay. She enjoyed working with anything she could get her hands on.
Bontecou went to Bradford Junior College for her general studies. Then, she studied at the Art Students League of New York from 1952 to 1955. There, she learned from a sculptor named William Zorach. In the summer of 1954, she went to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. This is where she learned how to weld metal.
She received a special scholarship called a Fulbright scholarship. This allowed her to study art in Rome, Italy, from 1957 to 1958. Later, in 1971, she started teaching art at Brooklyn College.
How World War II Influenced Her Art
Lee Bontecou's art was greatly affected by World War II. Many of her sculptures showed her strong feelings about the war. She once said that her artworks with "teeth" came from her anger about the war.
Both of her parents helped with the war effort. Her mother worked on parts for submarine navigation. Her father sold gliders for the military. Later, her husband, Bill Giles, was a medic in the Korean War.
Growing up, she spent summers with her grandmother in Nova Scotia, Canada. There, she learned to love nature. She also had an older brother named Hank.
Her Art Career
Bontecou is most famous for the sculptures she made in the late 1950s and 1960s. These artworks were special because they hung on the wall, challenging how art was usually shown. She used welded steel frames covered with recycled canvas and industrial items. These included things like conveyor belts or mail sacks. She also used other objects she found.
Her best sculptures combine mechanical and natural looks. They are abstract but can remind you of the harshness of war. An art critic named Arthur Danto called them "fierce." He said they looked like giant insects, battle masks, or armored chariots.
Bontecou showed her art at Leo Castelli's art gallery in the 1960s. Other famous artists like Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg also showed their work there. One of her biggest sculptures is in the lobby of the David H. Koch Theater in Lincoln Center in New York City. A famous architect named Philip Johnson asked her to create it.
From the 1970s until 1991, she taught art at Brooklyn College. She continued to teach into the 1990s. In 1988, she moved to Orbisonia, Pennsylvania, and kept making art. She worked a lot in her studio but didn't show her art very often.
Later Exhibitions and Recognition
Lee Bontecou's art was brought back into public view in 2003. A big show of her work traveled to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City in 2004. This show included art she made during her public career and many pieces she created after stepping away from the public eye.
In 2010, MoMA held another show of her work called All Freedom in Every Sense. In 2014, her drawings were shown in Lee Bontecou: Drawn Worlds. This exhibition traveled to the Princeton University Art Museum. Her art was also part of a show called Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947-2016 in 2016.
In 2017, a major exhibition of Bontecou's drawings and sculptures was held in the Netherlands. It included a special art piece called Sandbox, which she made with Joan Banach.
Artistic Style and Materials
In the 1960s, people praised Bontecou's art for being unique. It seemed to be a mix between painting and sculpture. Sculptor Donald Judd wrote that her work "asserts its own existence." This means her art felt strong and important on its own.
Bontecou used many different materials in her art. These included metal, paper, plastic, and fiberglass. She also used unusual materials and found new ways to create. In her drawings from the late 1950s, she used a special torch to make a carbon spray. This gave her drawings a soft, "airbrushed" look with very deep black colors. She later used this technique in her sculptures too.
Personal Life and Passing
Lee Bontecou was married to an artist named William Giles. They had a daughter together named Valerie.
Lee Bontecou passed away in Florida on November 8, 2022. She was 91 years old.
Legacy and Awards
In 1959, Lee Bontecou received the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award. In 2004, she was chosen to be a member of the National Academy of Design.
A photo of Bontecou working in her studio was taken by Italian photographer Ugo Mulas in 1963. This picture was used as the cover art for the band Spoon's 2007 album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. The sculpture seen in that photo is now in the Honolulu Museum of Art.
Bontecou's image is also in a famous 1972 poster. It's called Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.
Public Collections
You can see Lee Bontecou's artwork in many public museums and institutions, including:
- Chazen Museum of Art
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- David H. Koch Theater (New York City)
- David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University
- Glenstone
- Kunstmuseum Den Haag, (The Hague)
- Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University
- Honolulu Museum of Art
- Menil Collection
- Moderna Museet (Stockholm)
- Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam)
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
- Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
- Museum of Modern Art
- National Gallery of Art
- The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection (Albany, NY)
- Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
- The Richard M. Ross Art Museum (Delaware, OH)
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
- University of Michigan Museum of Art
- Walker Art Center
- Whitney Museum of American Art
Images for kids
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Untitled, 1959, a sculpture by Lee Bontecou.
See also
In Spanish: Lee Bontecou para niños
