Linda Besemer

LINDA BESEMER (Indiana, USA, 1957).
"Fold # 78. 2002.
Acrylic painting on aluminium rod.
Size: 76,2 x 63,5 cm.
Linda Besemer is one of the most interesting renovators of the formalist currents. The series "Pliegues" or "Folds" are abstractions of seductive quality and pure chromatic energy. Her folded canvases present an avant-garde structure in which the acrylic paint is freed from any support: the associations are multiple (such as traditional handicrafts, women's fabrics, antique tapestries or bath towels...).
Artist and teacher, Linda Besemer has taught painting and drawing at Occidental College since 1987, and has been Chair of the departments of Art History and Visual Arts and Women's Studies. In 2005, Professor Besemer was the recipient of Occidental's Graham L. Sterling Memorial Award for Professional Merit. And, in 2006, she was awarded an endowed professorship and became the James Irvine Distinguished Professor of the Arts. Besemer's paintings have been exhibited in numerous museums, including: The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, DC, SITE Sante Fe, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Albright Knox Museum, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Grand Arts, The South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art, The Bucksbaum Center for the Arts, The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, The Weatherspoon Museum of Art, The Portland Art Museum and The Palm Beach ICA. He has exhibited internationally in Europe, Asia and South America. Besemer is the recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship, a George and Eliza Howard Foundation Painting Fellowship, the Craft Media Prize (Corcoran Gallery of Art), the Chuck Close Rome Prize for Painting from the American Academy in Rome, and the Anonymous Was a Woman Fellowship from the AWAW Foundation in New York.