Purified and pigmented beeswax, damar resin, and gesso on masonite
Not on view
Benglis used pigmented beeswax to make Embryo II, one of a series of lozenge-shaped works from the mid-1960s that she scaled to the length of her arm. She brushed hot beeswax in upward strokes on the object's top half, and in downward strokes on the bottom. As it cooled, the wax formed a craggy topography. Reacting against what she viewed as the austerity of Minimalism, she embraced unusual materials, gaudy color, and bodily references. She also breathed new life into the dripping and pouring that had been associated with Abstract Expressionism, which in Benglis’s hands became witty and subversive rather than emotionally cathartic.
Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction, April 19–August 13, 2017
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Lynda Benglis
American, born 1941 18 works onlineAsked to summarize her artistic ambitions in the 1960s, Lynda Benglis replied, “I wasn’t breaking away from painting but trying to redefine what it was.
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