Sharing and engaging in art is more important now than ever. In that spirit, we are happy to present to you our fourth edition of a weekly series of online exhibitions, Judy Pfaff: Flowing Layers. While everything continues to shift around us, we hope that these new exhibitions give each of you a chance to experience the enthusiasm we bring to the art and artists we love.
Judy Pfaff (b. 1946) was born in London and later settled in America at the age of thirteen. She received her B.F.A. from Washington University and her M.F.A. from Yale University. From the beginning of her career in the 1970s, Pfaff has worked with a wide and unusual range of materials and moves back and forth easily between two- and three-dimensional work, creating art that is complex, profuse, and unique. Her dynamic, exuberant, large-scale works incorporate many different media. Like her installations, Pfaff’s prints have a three-dimensional presence and flowing quality with layered circles, lines and organic shapes echoing throughout the images. To bring the overall compositions together, her prints are often completed with hand-applied paints, fabric dyes, and collage layering.
Pfaff is the recipient of many awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center (2014), the MacArthur Foundation Award (2004), and the Guggenheim Fellowship (1983). Her innovative work has brought her wide acclaim from galleries and museums throughout the United States, Europe, and the Far East, and her work can be found in such prestigious collections as the Detroit Institute of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Pfaff lives and works in Tivoli, New York.