Lee Lozano
1930–1999
In Lee Lozano’s early 1960s graphite drawing, inanimate objects protrude from a rectangular, grinning face. Its crooked teeth grip a cigar or crayon, yet other accessories defy bodily logic: instead of a neck, a pipe and faucet extend from the disembodied head; instead of eyes, a triangular opening is pierced by the crank of a brace drill, positioned so that its handle serves as an ear while its jaws become a phallic nose. The inconsistency of graphite marks, which range from subtle chiaroscuro to violent scribbles, enhances the strangeness of the scene. This grotesque, Surrealist collision of human and mechanical forms is one of many Lozano produced in the years immediately following her move to New York around 1960. Made in pencil, wax crayon, pastel, and paint, these drawings stage disturbing, humorous, and perverse encounters between body parts—especially breasts, phalluses, and orifices—and a variety of handheld tools and household objects.
Lozano’s artistic career was cut short by a self-imposed exile from the art world in 1972, but during the nearly dozen years she spent in New York she produced a complex and provocative body of work. Her charged, mechanomorphic drawings can be seen as a comment on a turn to industrial techniques of art making, while also anticipating the gender politics of the late 1960s. A subsequent series of large-scale paintings and drawings depicts tools in a more hard-edged style that nonetheless retains suggestive anthropomorphism, while her language- based works of the late 1960s place her at the vanguard of Conceptualism.
Introduction
Lee Lozano (November 5, 1930 – October 2, 1999) was an American painter, and visual and conceptual artist.
Wikidata identifier
Q530367
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 11, 2025.
Introduction
Lozano pursued Conceptual Art and painting but left the art world in the 1960s for self-imposed exile that included an boycott on contact with other women.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, conceptual artist, painter, performance artist
ULAN identifier
500048708
Names
Lee Lozano, E, Lenore Knaster, Lee Knastner
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 11, 2025.
