Lynn Umlauf
Lynn Umlauf was born into a family of artists. She moved to New York in 1966-67, and first started showing in Italy. Her first New York show was with the Hal Bromm Gallery, and her first museum inclusion was with the 1975 Whitney Biennial. Her work has increasingly taken the form of large, onsite installations. She also prowls the Italian countryside, making improvisatory drawings that are closely connected to sculptures. Her method consists in using sanded and impregnated paper with pastel, watercolor or acrylic medium and often glued on free shaped canvases, which lends a handmade quality close to fresco. The result evokes analogies to shields and masks of primitive societies. But Umlauf engages her work in a push and pull movement with inside outside ambiguities in live structures like painting in the air.
Umlauf says of her work, “my sculpture relates strongly to the environment in which it is installed, in particular the light, walls and people interacting with it. It has been my ambition to create work that explores my metaphysical self and to discover meaningful new relationships and share them with others. My work translates my personal experience with life, drawing inspiration from surroundings in New York …
Lynn Umlauf was born into a family of artists. She moved to New York in 1966-67, and first started showing in Italy. Her first New York show was with the Hal Bromm Gallery, and her first museum inclusion was with the 1975 Whitney Biennial. Her work has increasingly taken the form of large, onsite installations. She also prowls the Italian countryside, making improvisatory drawings that are closely connected to sculptures. Her method consists in using sanded and impregnated paper with pastel, watercolor or acrylic medium and often glued on free shaped canvases, which lends a handmade quality close to fresco. The result evokes analogies to shields and masks of primitive societies. But Umlauf engages her work in a push and pull movement with inside outside ambiguities in live structures like painting in the air.
Umlauf says of her work, “my sculpture relates strongly to the environment in which it is installed, in particular the light, walls and people interacting with it. It has been my ambition to create work that explores my metaphysical self and to discover meaningful new relationships and share them with others. My work translates my personal experience with life, drawing inspiration from surroundings in New York and East Hampton, or abroad in Italy.”
Umlauf has shown her dynamic work extensively at galleries and institutions since the mid-1960s. Her solo exhibitions include Adler Gallery, New York, Galleria Plurima, Udine, Italy, Museo Revoltella, Trieste,Italy, Galerie Biedermann, Munich, Germany and Zürcher Gallery, New York. Group exhibitions include The International Museum of Women in Art, Abruzzo, Italy, Zimmerli Museum, Mason Gross School of the Arts, NJ, Sculpture Center, New York, Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Musee de la Villa de Toulon, France, among many others.
Courtesy of Zürcher Gallery
Reading Public Museum, Reading, PA
MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY
