Lea Lublin
Retrospective
June 25–September 13, 2015
Opening: Wednesday, June 24, 7pm
Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau
Luisenstr. 33
80333 Munich
Germany
Lenbachhaus presents the first retrospective exhibition dedicated to Argentine-French artist Lea Lublin (1929–99, born in Poland). Having begun her career as a painter in Buenos Aires, Lublin radically changed course in the mid-1960s to create art that would offer the greatest possible agency and participation for its audience. Lublin belonged to a generation of such artists as Lygia Clark and Allan Kaprow, who were committed to overcoming the boundaries separating “art and life.” Seeking dialogue and confrontation, Lublin’s approach was at once sensual and didactic, challenging yet egalitarian. Her work closely engaged with currents in critical theory, philosophy, and art of her time, and brings them alive for us today.
Though familiar to her artistic peers and a younger generation of scholars in France and Argentina, Lublin’s work is still largely unknown to a broader international audience. Spanning three decades, this presentation focuses on several essential chapters in the artist’s trajectory: the abandonment of painting in favor of environments and actions, the use of dialogue as an art form, the deconstruction of art-historical imagery (and Christian painting in particular), and the inquiry into Marcel Duchamp’s sojourn in Buenos Aires. In addition to photographs, drawings, wall installations, and videos, the exhibition will feature a reconstruction of Lublin’s most ambitious environment Fluvio Subtunal (1969) as well as off-site public interventions re-staging the artist’s long-time project Interrogations sur l’art (Interrogations of art) (1972–79, 1990s). On the occasion of the exhibition, Lenbachhaus is restoring and preserving a large body of key works from the artist’s estate and collaborating with the Bibliothèque nationale de France on the treatment of several of Lublin’s videos from the 1970s, which will be on view for the first time.
A related video program focusing on the historical and artistic contexts in which Lublin was working will be presented in the Kunstbau. A detailed schedule will be published in print and on www.lenbachhaus.de.
A copiously illustrated catalogue (German / English) will be published by Snoeck publishers in conjunction with the exhibition. Edited by Stephanie Weber and Matthias Mühling, 354 pp., more than 150 illustrations.
Curator: Stephanie Weber
About Lenbachhaus
The Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau are the exhibition venues of an internationally renowned municipal museum in Munich that brings the presentation of art and the discourse around it together in a fruitful and distinctive synthesis. The Lenbachhaus collects, conserves, studies, and presents the art of the 19th century, the Blauer Reiter, the New Objectivity, as well as international contemporary art.
Press contact: Claudia Weber
T +49 89 233 32020 / presse-lenbachhaus [at] muenchen.de
