PHX ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
R O T R A U T Renowned abstract artist Rotraut has many names. In 1938, she was born Rotraut Uecker, and when she married internationally acclaimed artist Yves Klein in 1962, she became Rotraut Klein. Then in 1968, six years after Yves Klein’s passing at the age of 34, Rotraut found love again and married curator Daniel Moquay, taking the name Rotraut Klein-Moquay.
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oday, she prefers to be known simply as Rotraut. “I’m proud of all my names,” she said, “but with my art, I think it’s good to just be yourself. All of these names are powerful and have lives of their own, but I like to just do my life and be me, not too much attached to everything else.” And so, Rotraut it is. Originally from Germany, the Valley-based contemporary artist moved to Phoenix in the early 1980s. At the time, she, Moquay, and their three boys, the oldest of whom is from Rotraut’s first marriage to Klein, had just welcomed a fourth child and daughter to their family, and Rotraut wanted her to “grow up in the sun.” She and Moquay first considered Israel or California for their new home, but after speaking with someone who had lived in Tempe, they eventually settled in Phoenix in 1982, in a house that Rotraut still lives in today and loves dearly. In fact, she’s been known to paint large-scale works on the ground just outside of the garage. image credit: (above)
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Deriving inspiration from the nourishing quality, harmony, and violence of nature, Rotraut’s abstract paintings, sculptures, and other works seek to explore humanity’s physical, spiritual, and emotional connection to the Earth and the infinite universe. Her first highly acclaimed exhibition was presented at the New Vision Centre Gallery in London, and since then, she has participated in several solo and group exhibitions and art fairs in the Americas, Asia, and Europe. In 2016, the Jena University of Sciences in Germany organized a large retrospective of her work, which is represented in numerous public collections in the United States and Europe in addition to private collections all over the world. We recently spoke with Rotraut, whose work Blue Galaxy (1989) is currently on view in Stories of Abstraction: Contemporary Latin American Art in the Global Context through March 7, 2021, to learn about her journey to becoming an artist, her fluid process, and her unending fascination with the cosmos.
Rotraut Klein-Moquay, Blue Galaxy, 1989. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist. (right) © Carole Morgane-Hamel.
WINTER/SPRING 2021 / PHXART MAGAZINE
