Saar, Betye
Name Entries
person
Saar, Betye
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Name Components
Surname :
Saar
Forename :
Betye
eng
Latn
authorizedForm
rda
Saar, Betye
Computed Name Heading
Name Components
Saar, Betye, 1926-
Computed Name Heading
Name Components
Surname :
Saar
Forename :
Betye
Date :
1926-
eng
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Saar, Betye (American assemblage artist and sculptor, born 1926)
Computed Name Heading
Name Components
Surname :
Saar
Forename :
Betye
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American assemblage artist and sculptor, born 1926
eng
Latn
alternativeForm
rda
Genders
Female
Exist Dates
Biographical History
Painter, sculptor, assemblage artist, installation artist, illustrator. Betye Saar is the mother of Alison Saar. She studied at the University of California and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California University in Long Beach and Northridge, as well as at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. She taught at the Otis Art Institute of the Parson School of Design in Los Angeles from 1976. She was awarded honorary doctorates from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland in 1991; the Otis Art Institute of the Parson School of Design in Los Angeles; the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, and from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 1992; and from the California Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1995. She lives and works in southern California.
Saar assembles objets trouvés for her constructions, which evoke both the boxes created by Joseph Cornell and the ritual coffins used in the Afro-Cuban cults of La Santeria. She has been influenced by Simon Rodia, the creator of a monumental sculpture put together from objets trouvés entitled Watts Tower (1921-1954) which stands in the Black quarter of Los Angeles. She oscillates between being a militant artist, denouncing the condition of American Blacks oppressed as a consequence of slavery and pursuing a spiritual quest to pursue anything that makes up the collective Afro-American memory. She thus attempts to give positive depictions of racial stereotypes or popular symbols such as the American flag. In her famous assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972) she transformed the stereotype of the fat Black nanny into a woman armed with a rifle in one hand and a bayonet and a grenade in the other. Aunt Jemima is also clenching a raised fist in the style of the Black Panthers. She illustrated A Secretary to the Spirits (Ishmael Reed, NOK Publishers, New York, 1978).
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Visual artist Betye Saar was born on July 20, 1926 in Los Angeles, California to Jefferson Maze Brown and Beatrice Lillian Parson. After the passing of her father in 1931, Saar and her family moved to Pasadena, California to live with her great-aunt, Hattie Parson Keys. Saar earned her B.A. degree in design, with a minor in sociology, from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1949. She later took graduate level classes in design at multiple institutions in California, but changed her artistic focus after taking a printmaking class.
After graduating from the University of California, Saar briefly worked as a social worker until she met jewelry artist Curtis Tann. She began making assemblages in 1967. After being inspired by the Watts Riots, an exhibit by Joseph Cornell, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Saar began making politically themed artwork. Her first and most well-known piece, wasThe Liberation of Aunt Jemima. Throughout her artistic career, Saar's artwork has been displayed at prominent art museums. In 1975, she held her first solo show at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York and was the first African American woman to have her art on display there. The following year, Saar participated in her first commercial gallery show at the Monique Knowlton Gallery in New York.
Saar has won many awards for her artwork throughout her career. She received two National Endowment for the Arts Awards, in 1974 and 1984. Saar also received the J. Paul Getty Fund for the Visual Arts Fellowship, the Artist Award from the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1990, as well as the Distinguished Artist Award from Fresno Art Museum in 1993, and the Flintridge Foundation Visual Artists Award. In 1994, Saar represented the U.S. at the 22nd Biennial of Sao Paulo in Brazil. In 2005, the University of Michigan Museum of Art organized the traveling exhibition Betye Saar: Extending the Frozen Moment which examined her incorporation of photographic fragments in her work. In 2008, she was recognized for her career in art and community activism and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus.
Saar has three daughters: Lezley, Alison, and Tracey.
Betye Saar was interviewed byThe HistoryMakerson July 19, 2017.
External Related CPF
https://viaf.org/viaf/114921470
https://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n80007387
https://id.loc.gov/authorities/n80007387
https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2900288
https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/A2017.116
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Languages Used
eng
Latn
Subjects
African American artists
Art and race
Assemblage artists
Feminism and art
Women artists
Nationalities
Americans
Activities
Occupations
Artists, American
Educators
Visual Artist
Legal Statuses
Places
Culver City (Calif.)
as recorded (not vetted)
AssociatedPlace
Work
Los Angeles
CA, US
AssociatedPlace
Residence
Los Angeles (Calif.)
as recorded (not vetted)
AssociatedPlace
Residence
Los Angeles (Calif.)
as recorded (not vetted)
AssociatedPlace
Birth
Convention Declarations
<conventionDeclaration><citation>VIAF</citation></conventionDeclaration>