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Stella Waitzkin

American sculptor and painter, 1920–2003

BiographyStella Waitzkin began as an Abstract Expressionist painter and studied with Hans Hofmann and Willem de Kooning before turning to polyester resin sculpture in the 1960s and early 1970s. It was then that she began creating an immersive installation in her Chelsea Hotel apartment in New York. This space served as her studio, exhibition, and living space, she referred to it as her “Details of a Lost Library.” Waitzkin is included in major museum and private collections, such as the Agnes Gund Collection, the Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and most recently the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum.

The artist’s process is quite unique. She began by making a cast of a form—most often Victorian books with reliefs and figure heads—and then poured polyester resin into the mold, often suspending color within the resin. The resulting sculptures seem to reference her origins as an Abstract Expressionist painter.

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