Margaret Lanzetta

Margaret Lanzetta (born 1 April, 1957) is an American artist using abstract, culturally-significant pattern to explore postmodern conditions of fragmentation, migration, and cultural hybridity. Lanzetta engages with a variety of mediums including painting, silkscreen, digital photography, and ceramics.

Margaret Lanzetta
Margaret Lanzetta
Born (1957-04-01) April 1, 1957
Waterbury, Connecticut
NationalityAmerican
OccupationArtist
Websitemargaretlanzetta.com

Lanzetta’s works are represented in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York;[1] the British Museum[2] and the Victoria and Albert Museum,[3] London; the Yale University Art Gallery;[4] the Harvard Art Museums;[5] the New York Public Library Print Collection; and the Hallmark Art Collection.[6]

Education

Lanzetta was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1957 and received a BA in Fine Arts in 1979 from the College of the Holy Cross. In 1981 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Lanzetta received an MFA in 1989 from the School of Visual Arts, New York. In 1989–90 Lanzetta received a Fulbright-Hays Award to study at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the class of Tony Cragg. Lanzetta has cited Ronald Bladen, Ursula von Rydingsvard, and Judy Pfaff as important influences.

Career

"Lanzetta’s work embodies an innovative marriage of digital technology"[7] with traditional painting and printmaking. Manipulated, fragmented patterns, "often rendered in industrial or printer’s saturated colors"[8] are silkscreened or hand stenciled on canvas or textiles. In mixed media, textile-based paintings, such as Light in Wartime, Lanzetta “examines ideas of ethnicity, non-ethnicity, migration, designs and cross culture…sourcing saris and fabrics and reassembling them in aesthetic combinations.”[9]

Light in Wartime, Acrylic and crystal mica on rayon, satin, and sari fabric

With this fragmentation, Lanzetta "undermines the sense of order and decorum normally associated with decorative and architectural patterns"; her paintings "transform the decorative into something far removed from paradise."[8] The fragmentation of nature, as symbol, inspiration, and eclipser of culture is also a persistent theme in Lanzetta’s work. In the painting Opposite Temperature Zones, the “splintered sakura [Japanese cherry blossoms] of the painting also bring to mind larger issues of genetic piracy, the dangers of invasive species and environmental degradation that threaten these and all other harbingers of future springs.”[10] Lanzetta’s physically insistent painting processes are rooted in her early sculptural work with wrapped and woven industrial rubber: "Thinking of [Lanzetta’s] works in terms of sculpture makes sense because her paintings and prints never really offer an invitation into an illusionistic space."[11] Lanzetta’s "deceptively fluid and painterly works"[12] mirror a politically hybridized world and "re-emerge as new, patched together 'wholes' that much more reflect a global cacophony of cultures and religions."[13]

Opposite Temperature Zones, Oil and acrylic on canvas

With reference to Minimalism's edge to edge compositions and "steeped in an insistent, physical repetition,"[14] Lanzetta’s all-over designs and mantra-like painting practice reflect her immersion in Eastern religions.

The concept of place and culture is critical to understanding Lanzetta’s practice. Similar to Pattern and Decoration artists, Lanzetta draws inspiration from outside the United States. While New York-based, Lanzetta has lived and worked as an artist in India, Syria, Japan, Italy, and various countries in Southeast Asia and North Africa. As a result, global and spiritual influences of Buddhism, textiles, world politics, and 'details of Indian architecture, motifs from historic Mughal carpets and plant forms,"[7] are persistent sources of inspiration. Each new country becomes a site for artistic investigation, as "one of the artist’s preoccupations is how to read and understand a constantly changing, visually insistent, multitudinous world."[8] "As Lanzetta has fed her increasingly omnivorous appetite from an ever-widening field of visual cultures…she has also dug deeper into these sources’ histories, exploring how form speaks to notions of aesthetics, power, and beauty."[15]


Exhibitions and Commissions

Margaret Lanzetta’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art[16] and the Queens Museum,[17] New York; the Bangkok National Museum (pop up exhibition); the Weatherspoon Art Museum, North Carolina; and the Nicolaysen Art Museum, Wyoming. The New York MTA Arts & Design commissioned Lanzetta's first public, permanent work, Culture Swirl, a series of seven faceted glass-paneled windscreens, for the Norwood Avenue subway station in 2007.[18] In 2020 Norte Maar commissioned new work by Lanzetta for CounterPointe 8, in collaboration with choreographer Mari Meade.[19] Lanzetta silkscreened on harlequin print rayon, silver brocade, and magenta Thai silk to create swirling textile panels incorporated into the dance. The collaboration, entitled Strategy Royale, premiered to Alessio Natalizia’s "24" by Not Waving.

In 2010, a twenty-year survey exhibition, titled Pet The Pretty Tiger, was mounted at the Cantor Gallery in Worcester, Massachusetts.[20] Lanzetta’s work has been exhibited in numerous galleries in New York, and international venues in Tokyo, London, Dusseldorf, Rome, Singapore and Rabat (Morocco).[21]

Lanzetta’s work was included in the 2016 Kochi-Muziris International Biennale Collateral Projects, India.[22]

Fellowships and Awards

Lanzetta was an inaugural recipient of a Fulbright Global Scholar Award to India, Singapore, and Thailand, from 2016–2019.[23] Earlier awards include a MESA Fulbright Scholar Award to Syria and India in 2007, and an Abbey Fellowship in Painting in 2003 for residency at the British School at Rome.[24] Lanzetta has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the MacDowell Colony,[25] the Ucross Foundation, Greenwich House Pottery,[26] and Dieu Donné.[27] Lanzetta has taught at Parsons School of Design, Western Carolina University, and held visiting artist appointments at Mount Holyoke College and the University of Southern Maine.

References
  1. "MoMa Collection". Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  2. "Collection". The British Museum. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  3. "The Collections". Victoria & Albert Museum. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  4. "Prints and Drawings". Yale University Art Gallery. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  5. "Collection". Harvard Art Museums. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  6. "Artist Directory". Hallmark Art Collection. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  7. Gill Saunders; Rosie Miles (2006). Prints Now Directions and Definitions. V & A Publications. ISBN 978-1851774807.
  8. John Yau (15 December 2020). "A Postmodern Garden: The Work of Margaret Lanzetta". artcritical. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  9. Priyadershini S (7 December 2016). "In the spirit of enquiry". The Hindu. Retrieved 13 July 2020.
  10. "Catalogue essay for exhibition Famous Ornament". Youkobo Art Space. Tokyo. 2013. Retrieved 13 July 2020.
  11. Carol Schwarzman (2010). "Pet The Pretty Tiger". Catalogue Essay for Exhibition Pet the Pretty Tiger, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery. Worcester, MA.
  12. Gill Saunders, Curator. Collecting the Contemporary. Word and Image Department, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
  13. George Bajalia; Anna Jacobs (2 January 2015). "Blues For Allah: Artist Margaret Lanzetta's Reflections on Patterns Across Time and Space". Muftah.org.
  14. Judy Halebsky (2015). "Ways To Leave Home". Catalogue for Exhibition The Chanteuse and a Loaded Gun, KBFA Gallery. New York.
  15. Carol Schwarzman (2012). "MARGARET LANZETTA Reign Marks & DAVID PACKER Les Bidons". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 13 July 2020.
  16. "Margaret Lanzetta". MoMa. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  17. "Queens International 2004". Queens Museum. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  18. "MTA Arts & Design: Norwood Avenue". MTA. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  19. "Announcing the choreographers and artists of CounterPointe8!". Norte Maar. 13 January 2020. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  20. "Previous Exhibit: Margaret Lanzetta: Pet the Pretty Tiger, Works 1990-2010". Cantor Art Gallery, College of the Holy Cross. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  21. "Margaret Lanzetta". Kenise Barnes Fine Art. Retrieved 10 June 2020.
  22. ""Terraoptics", 2016". Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  23. "Margaret Lanzetta". Fulbright Scholar Program. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  24. "Award-holders before 2005". British School at Rome. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  25. "Artists / Margaret Lanzetta". MacDowell Colony. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  26. "Margaret Lanzetta, Resident Artist". Greenwich House. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  27. "Margaret Lanzetta". Dieu Donne. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.