Lee Bontecou
1931–2022
Lee Bontecou’s abstract, wall-mounted sculptures from the late 1950s and 1960s conjure visual associations that range from the mechanical (camera lenses, engines, and gun barrels) to the natural world (rock formations, insect shells, human orifices, wounds, and celestial black holes). To build these intensely physical and ultimately mysterious reliefs, Bontecou began by welding a steel armature onto which she stitched canvas salvaged from the conveyer belts of the laundry beneath her Lower East Side apartment and later incorporated metal scraps and other found materials.
A large hole lined with sharp saw blades grins menacingly from the center of Untitled, 1961, like a set of mechanized teeth. Metal spools, washers, and grommets puncture the surface, poised threateningly as if they might expel toxic gas or bullets. The work embodies the anxiety of the Cold War era, foretelling, as Bontecou explained it, what is “to come if we do not learn to handle and face some of the facts of war inside us. It is pessimistic, angry, and full of destruction. . . . It is the negative side of the atomic age. It’s war.”
Bontecou was the only woman among a roster of notable male artists to be represented by the esteemed Leo Castelli Gallery in the 1960s. Although her work from this period was well received, she withdrew from the New York art world in the early 1970s and moved to rural Pennsylvania, reemerging three decades later to exhibit an abundant body of drawings and sculpture that included large-scale but achingly fragile mobiles made during the 1980s and 1990s.
Introduction
Lee Bontecou (January 15, 1931 – November 8, 2022) was an American sculptor and printmaker and a pioneer figure in the New York art world. She kept her work consistently in a recognizable style, and received broad recognition in the 1960s. Bontecou made abstract sculptures in the 1960s and 1970s and created vacuum-formed plastic fish, plants, and flower forms in the 1970s. Rich, organic shapes and powerful energy appear in her drawings, prints, and sculptures. Her work has been shown and collected in many major museums in the United States and in Europe.
Wikidata identifier
Q276372
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License . Accessed May 14, 2025.
Introduction
Known for her large wall-mounted works assembled from industrial materials that acted as both painting and sculpture.
Country of birth
United States
Roles
Artist, graphic artist, painter, sculptor
ULAN identifier
500024833
Names
Lee Bontecou
Information from the Getty Research Institute's Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License. Accessed May 14, 2025.
