Betye Saar

For nearly seven decades, Betye Saar has developed a poignant and eclectic oeuvre defined by her powerful metamorphosis of forgotten objects into mystical assemblages that probe nuanced experiences of womanhood, African American identity, and spirituality. Influenced by Joseph Cornell’s miniature box-like sculptures containing everyday items, Saar constructs intimate worlds from the found objects she intuitively collects, manipulates, and recontextualizes, paralleling ancient folkloric traditions of creating fabulations from the fragments of reality. Her transformative and spiritual images emerging from recycled common material inspired a new generation of artists, playing a key role in ushering in the development of Assemblage art.

Betye Saar grew up in Los Angeles and Pasadena, California, and studied design at the University of California, Los Angeles. She began her career at the age of 35, producing work that dealt with themes of mysticism, nature and family. Deeply affected by the Watts rebellion in 1965 and the death of Martin Luther King Jr., Saar dedicated her career to creating art that deftly harnesses the transformative power of ritual within the interstices of art historical conventions. It is only in recent years that Saar has received long overdue recognition as one of the most influential African American artists of the past half-century, distinguished for her transformative reimagining of everyday materials, which privileges spirituality to address matters of race, gender, and politics and probe the underpinnings of America’s collective memory.