SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO — Eight Modern is pleased to announce representation of Edda Renouf.
Internationally renowned painter Edda Renouf has long captivated viewers with her meditative compositions. Renouf intensifies her canvases prior to painting them by revealing essential qualities hidden within the canvas or paper.
Specifically, Renouf removes threads from the linen canvas or incises lines into paper before painting and sanding the surface. Geometric elements inherent to these materials are enhanced by the layering of various colors in acrylic, oil pastel or chalk, thus making visible the material’s light and energy. Through this process, Renouf’s abstract structures draw viewers in for a long, close look.
“Breaking away from the traditional approach to linen and paper, which are usually used as grounds on which to paint an image, my working process reveals and uncovers the life and abstract energy within the materials,” Renouf says.
Renouf’s work addresses the four classical elements — air, earth, fire (sun) and water. The artist is deeply inspired by nature and time, and she considers both her materials and methodology to be in tune with those elements. “Materials speak to me,” she says, “and unexpected things happen.”
She uses unprimed linen canvas and a variety of colors, from rich earth reds, oranges and siennas to ethereal blues, greys and subtle tones of white, to symbolize nature in both the microcosmic and macrocosmic worlds, while time is represented by the rhythmic repetition of lines that in some works refer to sound and music. The titles of her pieces also frequently represent the time and place in which they were created.
An American born in Mexico, Renouf left Mexico to study at universities in America, France, and Germany. She earned her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.F.A. from Columbia University. Since 1972 she has worked and lived in New York and Paris and has exhibited widely in both America and Europe.
In 1997 she had a retrospective exhibition at the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe, Germany and more recently, in 2004, The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., gave Renouf a solo exhibition titled ‘Revealed Structures’. Both these major exhibitions were accompanied by full length catalogues. She has also received several grants and awards, including grants from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Her work has been exhibited and collected by numerous museums internationally. A small selection of these includes the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the National Gallery of Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the British Museum in London; and the Australian National Gallery in Canberra.
Eight Modern is open Monday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. For further information and image requests, contact Jaquelin Loyd at info@eightmodern.net or (505) 995-0231.