Lee Lozano: A Timeline
Lee Lozano is one of the most innovative artists to have worked in America during the 1960s. Throughout her entire oeuvre, which spans a little more than a decade, she produced groundbreaking work in a progression of styles, from the figurative and cartoonish pop-expressionism of her early paintings and drawings, through serial minimalism, to language-based conceptual pieces. Upon settling in downtown New York, Lozano quickly entered into circles of like-minded artists and actively contributed to the developing art scene at the time. The following timeline provides a summary of her main activity and puts Lozano’s work into context.
Previous page: Lee Lozano at the opening of The New Art, Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, 1964, photo: Bill Wilson
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1930
Born Lenore Knaster in Newark, New Jersey.
1944
Changes name to ‘Lee’.
1948 – 51
Obtains a B.A. degree in natural science and philosophy from the University of Chicago.
1952 – 55
Starts working in the design department of the Container Corporation of America – a center of Bauhaus design in America – where she meets her future husband, Mexican-American architect Adrian Lozano.
1956
Obtains an M.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago.
Lee Lozano, no title, n.d., gouache, ink and graphite on paper, 30 × 50.5 cm / 11 3/4 × 19 7/8 in © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Stefan Altenburger Photography Zürich
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1959
Queen Elizabeth II visits the student exhibition ‘School of the Art Institute 80th Annual’. Local newspapers report how the Queen stopped to admire Lozano’s painting ‘Seated Figure’.
The Chicago Sun-Times, Tuesday July 7, 1959, ‘Royal Pair Views Art Trove’ by Rita Fitzpatrick
Her early work revolves around anatomic drawings. Lee Lozano, no title, 1960, graphite on paper, 42.8 × 35.1 cm / 16 7/8 × 13 7/8 in © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
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1960
On completing her studies, she travels with her husband to Spain, France, and Italy. Adrian then continues on to England, while Lee remains in Florence. When it is time to return to Chicago, she travels instead to New York, and the couple divorce after four years of marriage. At this point she is painting expressionist still lifes with aggressive undertones. Lee Lozano, no title, 1960, oil on linen, 61.4 × 76.2 cm / 24 1/8 x×30 in © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Barbora Gerny
1961
She becomes part of the New York art scene through Richard Bellamy who introduces her to Hollis Frampton and Carl Andre. She does a great deal of drawing with motifs frequently taken from the studio. Lee Lozano, no title, 1961, crayon on paper, 42 × 34.8 cm / 16 1/2 × 13 3/4 in © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Barbora Gerny
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1962 – 63
Lozano develops a very personal iconography, including religious symbols, tools, faces, body parts such as genitals, mouths, ears and noses, and whizzing anthropomorphic airplanes, where text and ‘punch lines’ common in advertising are sometimes interspersed. Lee Lozano, no title, 1960, oil on linen, 61.4 × 76.2 cm / 24 1/8 × 30 in © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Barbora Gerny
1963
She starts her large-scale paintings and drawings of tools.
Lee Lozano, no title, 1964, oil on canvas, 167 x 301.5 × 5 cm / 65 3/4 × 118 3/4 × 2 in © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Lee Thompson
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1964
She is one of the few women participating in the exhibition ‘Contemporary Erotica’ at the Van Bovenkamp Gallery in New York. Later that year she shows paintings at Richard Bellamy’s Green Gallery in New York.
Exhibition card, group exhibition at The Green Gallery, New York, October 24, 1964
1966
First solo exhibition at Bianchini Gallery in New York where she shows large-scale abstract paintings; the exhibition receives good reviews in the periodical Art News.
Cram, 1965, oil on canvas, 221 × 197.8 × 3.8 cm / 87 × 77 7/8 × 1 1/2 in © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Photo: Barbora Gerny
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1967
Her work follows a minimal and conceptual trajectory as she began working on the ‘Wave Paintings’, a series of 11 paintings that she finishes in 1970. She starts recording and documenting everyday events and personal experiences parallel to her painting and will eventually refer to these studies as ‘Pieces’.
1968
In December she is awarded a grant of two thousand dollars from the Cassandra Foundation; she uses the money to fund her project ‘Investment Piece’.
Lee Lozano, Investment Piece, 1969, Xerography, 32.1 × 21.6 cm / 12 5/8 × 8 1/2 in © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Barbora Gerny
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1969
Lozano starts ‘General Strike Piece’, in which she plans to gradually withdraw from the New York art world ‘to pursue investigations of total personal and public revolution’. February sees her first exhibition in Europe at the Galerie Ricke in Cologne, Germany. She takes part in a conceptually orientated group exhibition curated by Lucy Lippard at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York and shows the text-based works ‘Grass Piece’ and ‘No Grass Piece’.
Exhibition card, solo exhibition ‘Lee Lozano. Bilder 1964–1968’, Galerie Ricke, Cologne, Germany, 1969
In April, Lozano takes part in the Art Workers Coalition’s (AWC) first (and last) public hearing at the New York School of Visual Arts to discuss the social and political responsibilities of the art world. Chief among the demands being made was the greater representation of female, black, and homosexual artists in the museums. Lee Lozano, no title, 1969, ink on paper, 27.9 × 21.6 cm / 11 × 8 1/2 in © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth. Robert Nickas Collection
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1970
Solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York where she shows the ‘Wave Paintings’. She ceases to paint altogether and increasingly turns her attention to investigations, experiments and text-based works.
Lee Lozano, Wave Paintings, exhibition view, ‘Lee Lozano. Pulling Out The Stops’, Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 2017. Photo: Joaquín Cortés / Román Lores
Lee Lozano, Private Notebook 8, April 5, 1970, pp. 113–114 © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth Lee Lozano and Dan Graham, early 1970s © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
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1971
She is invited to lecture at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, Halifax, where she has a solo exhibition titled ‘Infofiction’. Lee Lozano lecturing at NSCAD, Halifax, Canada, July 16, 1971 © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
‘Decide to Boycott Women’; what began as a shortterm experiment to improve communication with women resulted in a rejection of all members of her own gender and of early forms of feminism that lasted for the remainder of her life.
1972
The Lisson Gallery in London organizes the exhibition ‘Infofiction II’; Lozano chooses to show as her sole work a square meter of sand that has been swept flat by an industrial brush, inviting visitors to write in the sand, which does not prove successful. She edits her notebooks and probably leaves New York later in the year.
1973 – 81
She now calls herself ‘Leefer’. She travels to Belgium and London. Little is known about what she does during these years.
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1982
She moves to Dallas to live with her parents. She now calls herself ‘E’. The same year, P.S.1 in New York shows her work in the exhibition ‘Abstract Art of the Sixties’.
1998
Four solo exhibitions take place, three in New York and one at the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, which at that time acquires the complete ‘Wave Paintings’ series.
1999
Lee Lozano dies in Dallas, Texas on October 2.
Lee Lozano, Private Notebook 4, cover page and p. 1, © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
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