MARY BETH EDELSON

Mary Beth Edelson (b. 1933, Indiana, d. 20 April 2021) was a celebrated American artist, activist, and pioneer of the first-generation Feminist art movement. Over the course of five decades, Edelson created iconic photographs, paintings, sculptures, drawings, performances, books/prints, collages and murals, often using her own body as canvas and subject matter. Edelson was the subject retrospectives at Kunsthalle Münster (2018-19) and Malmö Kunstmuseum, Sweden, which traveled to Migros Museum, Zürich (2006), as well as the traveling retrospective “Shape Shifter: the Art of Mary Beth Edelson (1988-1990).” Edelson has had numerous solo shows internationally and was included in important survey exhibitions including “Painting 2.0,” Museum Brandhorst, Munich; “WACK! Art of the Feminist Revolution,” MOCA, Los Angeles; “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star,” New Museum, NY; “Greater New York 2015,” MoMA PS1, New York; “Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York; “Mothers of Invention,” Mumok Museum of Contemporary Art, Vienna; “Coming to Power: 25 Years of Sexually X-Plicit Art by Women,” David Zwirner Gallery, New York; and most recently “Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s: Works from the Verbund Collection,” the Photographers’ Gallery, London.