Phantasm, 2025

Anya Spielman   Emerging artists

Anya Spielman is an American abstract painter. Her work explores the constellation of binary forces and forms, presenting doble images : the tension between knowledge and ignorance, between being seen and not, between humanity and inhumanity. She lives and works in the area of Los Angeles. Anya Spielman studied at the University of California, Davis, where she obtained a Barchelor's Degree in plastic arts and anthropology in 1989. She was one of Wayne Thiebaud's students, and he kept mentoring her after she graduated.

Spielman uses oil paint on a canvas, paper and boards of different sizes; she works on about 40 paintings at the same time, passing from one to the other, as they take shape, and then isolates the piece to finish it. Her saturated surfaces are bright, she alternates bright and matt layers, and makes nail marks that leave scars and deconstruct the work. These engraved marks and lines represent an image and an idea, and are often the underlying structure, the submerged language of a work.
Her use of reds and roses evokes the flesh and the blood, and the pale creams, yellows and blues of her palette recall the body fluids and the heartbeat of life.

Curiosity about what lies underneath the surface led Spielman to get inspired by corpses, and to conceptualize the underlying strata of a shape, it seemed evident for her that the process of dissection was linked to the process of painting. She is captivated by the physical act of painting, the intensity of saturated colors and human motivation.

Ted Mooney, editor for Art in America, said about Spielman's work: "Anya Spielman's mastery of her invariably attractive palette of colors can be misleading: she knows the depths of human motivation and does not hesitate to bring the observer to more ambiguous and darker places than the one which could seem obvious at the beginning. However, it can take some time to figure out how you arrived there, and to figure out how to come back. But after all, this is exactly the characteristic of all the paintings worthy of its name".

Spielman's works are part of numerous private and public collections, mainly in the United States, as well as abroad, including the permanent collection of the US State Department, which acquired an oil painting of 54 "x124" on paper, called "weightless" as part of the Art in Ambassassies (AIE) program. This work is exhibited at the Embassy of the United States in Monterrey, Mexico.
Spielman has exhibited extensively in the United States in solo and group exhibitions. She has also done international exhibitions in Canada, Uruguay and Argentina.
Her work has also been presented in several art fairs, including Select Fair NYC, Aqua Art Miami, Art Fair 21, Cologne and Bridge Art Fair in London.

NOTABLE DISTINCTIONS

2013
•"Weightless" was purchased as part of the "Art in Embassies" (AIE) program by the US State Department for the permanent collection of the United States Embassy in Monterrey, Mexico.
•Nominated to the grant for painters and sculptors by the Joan Mitchell Foundation.

2010
; Presented at the Bowery Artist Tribute of the New Museum

2007
Chosen for the Program of American Artists Abroad by the US State Department, to serve as art ambassador in Uruguay, teach and give lectures.