Candid photograph of artist Sari Dienes (1898-1992) painting her work Spring (about 1950) in front of the Cedar Tavern, New York, NY. Copyright Sari Dienes Foundation/Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York, NY. Photograph by Peter Moore © Northwestern University
Sari Dienes's (b. 1898 Debeczen, Austria-Hungary; d. 1992 Stony Point, NY) career spanned six decades; besides being a pioneer in the art of assemblage, she also created drawings, paintings, prints, sculptures, textile designs, music, and performance art. This exhibition will highlight her iconic large-scale Sidewalk Rubbings series (1953–55), which are bold, graphic, geometrical compositions, combining rubbings of maintenance hole covers, subway gratings, and other elements of the urban streetscape.
In fact, Dienes's appropriation of the environment signaled a move away from the gestural mark-making of Abstract Expressionism that was de rigueur in the art world at the time. To be sure, Dienes was a key historical figure in the transition to Pop art. Notably, she exerted significant influence on Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns and has left a legacy in contemporary art today.
Curated Associate Curator Kelli Bodle
