top of page

Lee Bontecou Works


Lee Bontecou - Seventh Stone 1965-1968, pencil signed, dated and numbered 3-31, with full margins, Universal Limited Art Editions, West Islip, New York, publisher and with their blindstamp. Lithograph on wove paper. image: 14 x 10 1/2 in. (35.6 x 26.7cm) sheet: 25 x 20 in. (63.5 x 50.8cm)

Lee Bontecou - Untitled (Wish Well), from National Collection of Fine Arts Portfolio 1967, pencil signed, dated and numbered 2/144, with full margins, HKL Ltd., New York, New York, along with Universal Limited Art Editions, West Islip, New York, publishers and with the ULAE blindstamp. Etching and aquatint in colors on Flax paper. image: 26 x 17 in. (66 x 43.2cm) sheet: 30 1/8 x 19 3/4 in. (76.5 x 50.2cm)



Lee Bontecou (born January 15, 1931 in Providence, Rhode Island) is an American sculptor and printmaker and a pioneer figure in the New York art world. She kept her work consistently in a recognizable style, and received broad recognition in the 1960s.

Bontecou made abstract sculptures in the 1960s and 1970s and

created vacuum-formed plastic fish, plants, and flower forms in the 1970s. Rich, organic shapes and powerful energy appear in her drawings, prints, and sculptures. Her work has been shown and collected in many major museums in the United States and in Europe.


In the 1960s, Bontecou's work was hailed for its unique position in between painting and sculpture. Sculptor Donald Judd wrote that her work "asserts its own existence, form and power. It becomes an object in its own right." The openness, autonomy, and engineering processes central to her work, were embraced by the Feminist Art Movement in the 1970s and her use of cavities and holes has been read as female genitalia, and the related, central core imagery. It is an association the artist denied. Her work has been characterized by references to the synergy between nature and fiction, resulting naturalistically rendered creatures, with grotesquely morphed features.


Public collections

  • Chazen Museum of Art[21]

  • Cleveland Museum of Art[22]

  • David H. Koch Theater (New York City)

  • David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University

  • Glenstone[23]

  • Kunstmuseum Den Haag, (The Hague)[24]

  • Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University

  • Honolulu Museum of Art

  • Menil Collection[10]

  • Moderna Museet (Stockholm)

  • Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam)

  • Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago[25]

  • Museum of Fine Arts, Houston[26]

  • Museum of Modern Art[27]

  • National Gallery of Art[28]

  • The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection (Albany, NY)[29]

  • Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts[30]

  • The Richard M. Ross Art Museum (Delaware, OH)

  • Smithsonian American Art Museum[31]

  • Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

  • University of Michigan Museum of Art[32]

  • Walker Art Center[33]

  • Whitney Museum of American Art[2]


Lee Bontecou

1931

Seraphin Gallery, Philadelphia, PA


bottom of page