Edward & Nancy Kienholz
Edward & Nancy Kienholz was an American artist couple consisting of Nancy Kienholz (born Nancy Reddin in 1943 ; died 2019) and Edward Kienholz (1927–1994) who worked together as object , installation and conceptual artists from 1972 to 1994 . The artist couple lived and worked in the arts in Hope ( Idaho ), Houston ( Texas ) and Berlin .
History and work
Edward Kienholz began to work as a self-taught artist as early as the 1950s . The two met in 1972. Ed Kienholz was married four times when he met Nancy. The two married and stayed together until Edward's death in 1994. Nancy Kienholz, who was a trained photographer , learned from her husband "Ed" to work as an artist for more than twenty years.
The two performed as an artist couple and signed many works together. This equality of several artists who had worked on a joint work was new and revolutionary at the time.
Ed & Nancy Kienholz are considered to be two of the leading neodadaist artists who made the step from a Dadaist environment to object assembly. From 1973 the couple lived and worked alternately in Germany (in Cologne and Berlin) and in Hope.
In 1972 they took part in documenta 5 in Kassel in the Individual Mythologies department with the anti-racism installation “ Five Car Stud ” (consisting of 5 American automobiles and 9 life-size figures) . The installation “ Five Car Stud ” was organized by documenta founder Arnold Bode with his own funding - against the will of the exhibition director of documenta 5 Harald Szeemann .
Her works belong to the collections of major museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art - LACMA , Los Angeles , The Museum of Contemporary Art - MOCA , Los Angeles, Whitney Museum of American Art , New York , Orange County Museum of Art , Newport Beach , Norton Simon Museum , Pasadena , Portland Art Museum , Portland , The McNay Art Museum , San Antonio, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art - SFMOMA , San Francisco .
Nancy Kienholz staged Edward Kienholz's funeral ceremony in 1994 as the last artistic act together.
Literature and Sources
- documenta 5th survey of reality - visual worlds today. Exhibition catalog. (as file folder) Volume 1: Material ; Volume 2: List of exhibits. Kassel 1972.
- documenta archive (ed.): Resubmission d5 - A survey of the archive on documenta 1972. Kassel / Ostfildern 2001, ISBN 3-7757-1121-X .
- L. Weschler (Ed.): Edward Kienholz. 2 volumes. Los Angeles 1977.
- J. Harten (Eds.): Edward and Nancy Kienholz. 1980's. Exhibition catalog. Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and others, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1989.
- RL Pincus (Ed.): On a Scale that Competes with the World. The Art of Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz. Berkeley 1990.
- W. Hopps: Kienholz. A retrospective. Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz. Whitney Museum of American Art , New York / London 1996. ( Berlinische Galerie , Berlin / Munich 1997)