Lila Katzen
American, (1932–1998)
Lila Pell Katzen (1932-1998)
Medium/Discipline: Design, Painting, Sculpture, Works on Paper
Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
Place of Death: New York, New York
Maryland Affiliation: Active while in residence
Prominent Theme: Abstract
Style/Period: Minimalism
Gender: Female
Race/Ethnicity: White
Biography: Born in Brooklyn, sculptor Lila Katzen initially studied painting at the Art Students League and then earned her B.F.A. at Cooper Union in New York. Katzen is a modernist sculptor whose corten-steel work came to the fore in the 1970s. She was originally a student of architectural drawing, and then became a painter, much influenced by her colleague and friend Morris Louis in Baltimore, and by the gestural work of Jackson Pollock in New York. While Katzen's print oeuvre is very small and uncatalogued, she worked in the medium. She studied Abstract Expressionism with Hans Hoffman in New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1952. Throughout her early life as an artist, she met art notables including Clement Greenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Alexander Archipenko, Sam Francis, David Smith and Richard Anuszkiewicz.
In 1948, Lila Katzen, born Lila Pell, married Philip Katzen and moved to Baltimore with him. In 1955, Katzen had her first solo exhibition of paintings at the Baltimore Museum of Art. She accepted a position at the Maryland Institute of Art in 1962 and remained as faculty there until 1980. In 1963, she spoke about her painting style: "My paintings may be considered abstractions, in that they may not represent things which are recognizable as objects in the conventional sense. I'm interested in the essence of life, the magnificence of growth, in the life process. I am interested in the magic of beauty, in its fluidity, its rhythms." (Robert G. Breen, "'Essence of Life' In Abstraction," Baltimore Sun, Oct. 30, 1963) It was sculptor George Segal, whom Katzen met in 1964, that encouraged her to sculpt, seeing her obvious talents in that direction. During this time, Katzen was experimenting with acrylic constructions, fluorescent sculpture using light and plastics and other non-traditional materials; by 1968, she was creating large plastic sculptures in a Minimalist vein. She was commissioned by the Architectural League of New York to develop a three-room environment of light floors. Her Minimalist sympathies also led to such an interest in installation, and she soon achieved international notoriety for Liquid Tunnel, a light and fluorescent liquid sculpture, at the 1970 Sao Paulo Biennale. She departs from the Minimalist approach, however, due to its austerity and absence of humanity.
Katzen's philosophical approach to public sculpture was to create works that are approachable and encourage human interaction with the pieces themselves as well as spatial interactions with the site. Curator Cindy Nemser has divided Katzen's sculpture into three categories: strata pieces, which are site-specific to an outdoor space and comprise a number of parts of different shapes and sizes; complex configurations comprising one large section from which smaller pieces are extracted; and massive, single-section sculptures. Her work is not vertically striking but generally horizontal in order to foster human participation in the pieces. Many of her pieces are monumental in length but not in verticality.
Lila Katzen began to work in stainless steel, aluminum and bronze in 1969, which marked a turning point in her career. She began producing monumental steel sculptures at this time. She does not weld together her pieces that make up a particular work but rather uses metal dowels. Katzen began to receive awards for her work in the 1970s (see below). In 1972, she moved from Baltimore to New York, but continued commuting for Baltimore to fulfill her teaching duties at Maryland Institute College of Art until 1980. In 1976, she taught at the New School for Social Research in New York City.
Much of Katzen's late sculpture from the 1980s and 1990s uses polished stainless steel or aluminum, burnished so as to reflect light in decorative patterns executed on a less monumental, human scale. She collaborated with landscape architects Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden in 1982 on work that showed her departure "from the minimal in favor of a movement toward nature and its life-giving forces. (Dr. Louise Averill Svendsen, "Lila Katzen: Sculpture Returns to the Garden," Alex Rosenberg Gallery, New York City, November 11-December 11, 1982). Many of the works of the period have the compositional appearance of cloth or more specifically ribbon; Katzen begins the sculptural process with small, narrow pieces of sheet metal foil that she bends and folds with her fingers, or uses wax, to form maquettes. During this time, she produced a series of sculptures dealing with Queen Isabella of Spain: Donald Kuspit writes, "...Isabella fascinates Katzen because she was an absolute monarch: she was the rare instance of the state being embodied in a female person...She was totally identified with the state." (Kuspit, "Identifying with Power: Lila Katzen's Isabella," 1992) Donald Kuspit has described works of the period, stating "the graciousness of Katzen's supple, textured stainless steel and bronze (sometimes aluminum sculptures) curve like voluptuous ribbon, often climaxing in what can only be regarded as a kind of bow." Favorite Graces, located on the Wichita State University campus, also has the appearance of a large ribbon, folded into a form similar to Baroque ornamentation. In 1995, Katzen was invited to Wichita State University as a visiting professor.
Katzen's work is part of the collections of the Wichita State University Outdoor Sculpture Collection; De Cordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Massachusetts; The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida; The Baltimore Museum of Art; Fordham University at Lincoln Center, New York, New York; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia; National Gallery of Fine Art, Washington DC; National Museum of American Art, Washington D.C.; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Santa Monica, California; and Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. Katzen's work is in more than 70 private collections. Commissions include The Royal Family of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; the Rosenstiel Foundation Building at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts; General Services Administration, Peter Rodino Building, Newark, New Jersey; University of Texas, Arlington, Texas; Housing & Urban Development, Miami, Florida; Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company, Baltimore, Maryland; Architectural League of New York City; and Patrick Lannan, Palm Beach, Florida.
Education/Training: Cooper Union and Art Students' League, New York City, pre-1948; Hans Hoffman School
Taught By: Hans Hoffman
Selected References: Breen, Robert G. "'Essence of Life' In Abstraction," Baltimore Sun. October 30, 1963.
Kuspit, Donald. Lila Katzen Sculpture Installation: Isabella, Columbus and The Statue of Liberty Quincentenary Exhibition. College of William and Mary (February 28 - April 5, 1992) and University of North Carolina (September 13-October 30, 1992).
Lila Katzen Quincentinary Sculpture Exhibition: Isabel, Columbus and the Statue of Liberty, February 29 - April 5, 1992.
Katzen, Lila. Sculpture: Fan/Ribbon and Plate Works, 1979, 1980.
Nemser, Cindy. Lila Katzen: Sculpture and Site. The Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, MD). 1975.
Svendsen, Dr. Louise Averill. Lila Katzen: Sculpture Returns to the Garden, Alex Rosenberg Gallery, New York City, November 11-December 11, 1982.
Wichita State University, Favorite Graces
Maryland Institutions Holding Artworks: The Baltimore Museum of Art
Single-Artist Exhibitions: partial list:
Paintings, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1955.
Paintings, Gallery Mayer, New York. 1960.
Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, 1963.
National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., 1968.
Lila Katzen, University of Georgia, Athens Georgia; Georgia Museum of Art. September 22-November 22, 1969.
The Universe as Environment: Moon-Markers, New York University, Loeb Student Center; State University of New York at Stonybrook, 1969.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1969.
Wall and Floor Works, Max Hutchinson Gallery, 1970.
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, 1975.
University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA, 1977.
Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL, 1979.
Metropolitan Museum, Coral Gables, FL, 1980.
Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach, FL, 1980.
Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT, 1981.
Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA, 1983.
Lila Katzen: Sculpture Returns to the Garden, Alex Rosenberg Gallery, New York City, 1982.
Ruins & Reconstructions, A Cross-Cultural Dimension, Huntsville Museum of Art, Alabama, 1985.
Stamford Museum of Art, Stamford, CT, 1986.
Corona Park at the Queens Museum, Flushing, NY, 1990.
Lila Katzen Sculpture Installation: Isabella, Columbus and The Statue of Liberty Quincentenary Exhibition. College of William and Mary; University of North Carolina, 1992.
Multiple-Artist Exhibitions: partial list:
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C, 1969, 1970.
Jewish Museum of Art, New York, 1969.
Whitney Museum of American Art, 1973.
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, 1975.
Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1981.
The Art Gallery, University of Maryland College Park, 1984.
Awards: Outstanding Work in Exhibit, Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1959.
Tiffany Foundation Fellowship, 1964.
Gutman Foundation Award, New York, New York, 1967.
Work Selected, Sao Paolo Biennale, 1970.
Short Term Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, 1973.
Goodyear Fellowship, 1974.
Creative Arts Award, American Association of University Women, 1974.
American, (1932–1998)
Lila Pell Katzen (1932-1998)
Medium/Discipline: Design, Painting, Sculpture, Works on Paper
Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
Place of Death: New York, New York
Maryland Affiliation: Active while in residence
Prominent Theme: Abstract
Style/Period: Minimalism
Gender: Female
Race/Ethnicity: White
Biography: Born in Brooklyn, sculptor Lila Katzen initially studied painting at the Art Students League and then earned her B.F.A. at Cooper Union in New York. Katzen is a modernist sculptor whose corten-steel work came to the fore in the 1970s. She was originally a student of architectural drawing, and then became a painter, much influenced by her colleague and friend Morris Louis in Baltimore, and by the gestural work of Jackson Pollock in New York. While Katzen's print oeuvre is very small and uncatalogued, she worked in the medium. She studied Abstract Expressionism with Hans Hoffman in New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1952. Throughout her early life as an artist, she met art notables including Clement Greenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Alexander Archipenko, Sam Francis, David Smith and Richard Anuszkiewicz.
In 1948, Lila Katzen, born Lila Pell, married Philip Katzen and moved to Baltimore with him. In 1955, Katzen had her first solo exhibition of paintings at the Baltimore Museum of Art. She accepted a position at the Maryland Institute of Art in 1962 and remained as faculty there until 1980. In 1963, she spoke about her painting style: "My paintings may be considered abstractions, in that they may not represent things which are recognizable as objects in the conventional sense. I'm interested in the essence of life, the magnificence of growth, in the life process. I am interested in the magic of beauty, in its fluidity, its rhythms." (Robert G. Breen, "'Essence of Life' In Abstraction," Baltimore Sun, Oct. 30, 1963) It was sculptor George Segal, whom Katzen met in 1964, that encouraged her to sculpt, seeing her obvious talents in that direction. During this time, Katzen was experimenting with acrylic constructions, fluorescent sculpture using light and plastics and other non-traditional materials; by 1968, she was creating large plastic sculptures in a Minimalist vein. She was commissioned by the Architectural League of New York to develop a three-room environment of light floors. Her Minimalist sympathies also led to such an interest in installation, and she soon achieved international notoriety for Liquid Tunnel, a light and fluorescent liquid sculpture, at the 1970 Sao Paulo Biennale. She departs from the Minimalist approach, however, due to its austerity and absence of humanity.
Katzen's philosophical approach to public sculpture was to create works that are approachable and encourage human interaction with the pieces themselves as well as spatial interactions with the site. Curator Cindy Nemser has divided Katzen's sculpture into three categories: strata pieces, which are site-specific to an outdoor space and comprise a number of parts of different shapes and sizes; complex configurations comprising one large section from which smaller pieces are extracted; and massive, single-section sculptures. Her work is not vertically striking but generally horizontal in order to foster human participation in the pieces. Many of her pieces are monumental in length but not in verticality.
Lila Katzen began to work in stainless steel, aluminum and bronze in 1969, which marked a turning point in her career. She began producing monumental steel sculptures at this time. She does not weld together her pieces that make up a particular work but rather uses metal dowels. Katzen began to receive awards for her work in the 1970s (see below). In 1972, she moved from Baltimore to New York, but continued commuting for Baltimore to fulfill her teaching duties at Maryland Institute College of Art until 1980. In 1976, she taught at the New School for Social Research in New York City.
Much of Katzen's late sculpture from the 1980s and 1990s uses polished stainless steel or aluminum, burnished so as to reflect light in decorative patterns executed on a less monumental, human scale. She collaborated with landscape architects Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden in 1982 on work that showed her departure "from the minimal in favor of a movement toward nature and its life-giving forces. (Dr. Louise Averill Svendsen, "Lila Katzen: Sculpture Returns to the Garden," Alex Rosenberg Gallery, New York City, November 11-December 11, 1982). Many of the works of the period have the compositional appearance of cloth or more specifically ribbon; Katzen begins the sculptural process with small, narrow pieces of sheet metal foil that she bends and folds with her fingers, or uses wax, to form maquettes. During this time, she produced a series of sculptures dealing with Queen Isabella of Spain: Donald Kuspit writes, "...Isabella fascinates Katzen because she was an absolute monarch: she was the rare instance of the state being embodied in a female person...She was totally identified with the state." (Kuspit, "Identifying with Power: Lila Katzen's Isabella," 1992) Donald Kuspit has described works of the period, stating "the graciousness of Katzen's supple, textured stainless steel and bronze (sometimes aluminum sculptures) curve like voluptuous ribbon, often climaxing in what can only be regarded as a kind of bow." Favorite Graces, located on the Wichita State University campus, also has the appearance of a large ribbon, folded into a form similar to Baroque ornamentation. In 1995, Katzen was invited to Wichita State University as a visiting professor.
Katzen's work is part of the collections of the Wichita State University Outdoor Sculpture Collection; De Cordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Massachusetts; The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida; The Baltimore Museum of Art; Fordham University at Lincoln Center, New York, New York; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia; National Gallery of Fine Art, Washington DC; National Museum of American Art, Washington D.C.; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Santa Monica, California; and Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. Katzen's work is in more than 70 private collections. Commissions include The Royal Family of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; the Rosenstiel Foundation Building at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts; General Services Administration, Peter Rodino Building, Newark, New Jersey; University of Texas, Arlington, Texas; Housing & Urban Development, Miami, Florida; Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company, Baltimore, Maryland; Architectural League of New York City; and Patrick Lannan, Palm Beach, Florida.
Education/Training: Cooper Union and Art Students' League, New York City, pre-1948; Hans Hoffman School
Taught By: Hans Hoffman
Selected References: Breen, Robert G. "'Essence of Life' In Abstraction," Baltimore Sun. October 30, 1963.
Kuspit, Donald. Lila Katzen Sculpture Installation: Isabella, Columbus and The Statue of Liberty Quincentenary Exhibition. College of William and Mary (February 28 - April 5, 1992) and University of North Carolina (September 13-October 30, 1992).
Lila Katzen Quincentinary Sculpture Exhibition: Isabel, Columbus and the Statue of Liberty, February 29 - April 5, 1992.
Katzen, Lila. Sculpture: Fan/Ribbon and Plate Works, 1979, 1980.
Nemser, Cindy. Lila Katzen: Sculpture and Site. The Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, MD). 1975.
Svendsen, Dr. Louise Averill. Lila Katzen: Sculpture Returns to the Garden, Alex Rosenberg Gallery, New York City, November 11-December 11, 1982.
Wichita State University, Favorite Graces
Maryland Institutions Holding Artworks: The Baltimore Museum of Art
Single-Artist Exhibitions: partial list:
Paintings, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1955.
Paintings, Gallery Mayer, New York. 1960.
Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, 1963.
National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., 1968.
Lila Katzen, University of Georgia, Athens Georgia; Georgia Museum of Art. September 22-November 22, 1969.
The Universe as Environment: Moon-Markers, New York University, Loeb Student Center; State University of New York at Stonybrook, 1969.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1969.
Wall and Floor Works, Max Hutchinson Gallery, 1970.
Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, 1975.
University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA, 1977.
Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL, 1979.
Metropolitan Museum, Coral Gables, FL, 1980.
Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach, FL, 1980.
Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT, 1981.
Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA, 1983.
Lila Katzen: Sculpture Returns to the Garden, Alex Rosenberg Gallery, New York City, 1982.
Ruins & Reconstructions, A Cross-Cultural Dimension, Huntsville Museum of Art, Alabama, 1985.
Stamford Museum of Art, Stamford, CT, 1986.
Corona Park at the Queens Museum, Flushing, NY, 1990.
Lila Katzen Sculpture Installation: Isabella, Columbus and The Statue of Liberty Quincentenary Exhibition. College of William and Mary; University of North Carolina, 1992.
Multiple-Artist Exhibitions: partial list:
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C, 1969, 1970.
Jewish Museum of Art, New York, 1969.
Whitney Museum of American Art, 1973.
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, 1975.
Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 1981.
The Art Gallery, University of Maryland College Park, 1984.
Awards: Outstanding Work in Exhibit, Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1959.
Tiffany Foundation Fellowship, 1964.
Gutman Foundation Award, New York, New York, 1967.
Work Selected, Sao Paolo Biennale, 1970.
Short Term Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, 1973.
Goodyear Fellowship, 1974.
Creative Arts Award, American Association of University Women, 1974.
Artist Objects
Bradford with Curl 2008.067
Artist Images