Lee Lozano

3 Oct 2020-10 Jan 2021

Overview

This Autumn, Hauser & Wirth Somerset will present a significant body of early work by pioneering New York-based artist Lee Lozano (1930–1999). Created in 1962–1963, the paintings and drawings of this series use airplanes as a central image and can be considered as examples of the artist’s passionate exploration of creative energy in its purist form. Iris Müller-Westermann writes about the series as ‘Metaphors for a kind of thought energy – for ideas circulating, being heard and taken in, processed, produced, and sent out again. One could regard these airplane pictures as investigations of the raw material necessary for every sort of creative activity. After all, everything starts with an idea, including art.’ Lozano’s works from the early 1960s are stylistically distinct, admired for their furious physicality, unapologetic confidence and urgent energy. They exploit the boundaries between body and machine, eroticism and aggression, to powerful effect. A passionate and shrewd observer of urban culture, Lozano created work in response to the constraints imposed by systems constituted via dynamics of gender, power, money, politics, and institutions such as marriage and maternity.