Fenz, Robert, 1969-2020

Robert Fenz (1969-2020) was a lyrical filmmaker and photographer.Fenz was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on March 21, 1969. He first engaged with photography and film as a teen, and moved to San Francisco at eighteen to be a projectionist. Fenz then graduated from Bard College in 1997, where he completed his kinetic film Vertical Air (1996). He made a five-part series on the unnamed in society: Meditations on Revolution (1997-2003) filmed throughout the Americas: in Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, Mississippi, and New York City. This work was enabled by a full tuition scholarship from the California Institute of the Arts where he graduated with an MFA in 2002. His films further include Passage (1993), The Sole of the Foot (2011), Books (2014), Memorizing Lou (2014), Toros (2014), Tea (2014), andLa Nuit (2014).Fenz studied as a cinematographer with Chantal Akerman and Robert Gardner. He responded to Akerman with Crossings (2007) and to Gardner with Correspondence (2011).Fenz received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004 and the Berlin Artist in Residence Grant from the DAAD in 2006. Fenz's films are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou, Harvard Film Archive, California Institute of the Arts, and private collection Sammlung Hoffmann and were featured in the Whitney Biennials in 2008 and 2002. He had solo retrospectives at the Centre Pompidou 2015, the 16th BAFICI Buenos Aires 2014, CA2M Centro de Arte Madrid 2013, Sammlung Hoffmann 2012, 55th BFI London 2011, Harvard Film Archive 2008, and Museum of Modern Art 1997. He was married to Virginia Cornish, who he first met as a child.

On August 8, 2020 the life and career of world-renowned lyrical filmmaker, intellectual and humanist, and devoted family member and friend, Robert William Fenz, was cut tragically short. Fenz was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on March 21, 1969. His mother, Karin, grew up in Norway, and his father, Emanuel, in Italy. The youngest of five children, after Erik, Ingrid, John, and Heidi, family was central to his life. He recounted with pride their travels around the world as children...