Anchor 3, 2010

Lynda Benglis   Emerging artists

Lynda Benglis was born in 1941 in Louisiana. Her paintings, sculptures and installations made a statement in the 70s and earned her exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum, Los Angeles County Museum, MoMA in New York, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Whitney. She studied at Lake Charles, her hometown, then at Newcomb College in New Orleans and Brooklyn Museum Art School.

She is particularly well-known for latex sculptures which she created as in-gallery performances during the 70s. She also created adverts questioning gender stereotypes, which shocked both the art world and feminists at the time.

Combining minimalism and modernism, her artwork brings together different materials: beeswax, polyurethane, gold leaf, latex, zinc and aluminium. She plays with the features of different materials to influence the form and intrigue the viewer.

In recent years, Lynda Benglis has continued an active international career. She has received major retrospectives, notably at the Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas, 2010) and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Her work was featured at the Venice Biennale in 2011 and has been exhibited in many European institutions, including Le Consortium in Dijon and the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris. She continues to renew her artistic vocabulary by exploring totemic forms in bronze and aluminum, reinforcing her status as a key figure in contemporary sculpture.