LACMA Presents Betye Saar: Call and Response

(Los Angeles, CA—July 16, 2019) The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents the first exhibition to examine the relationship between Betye Saar’s sketchbooks—which she has kept since the late 1960s—and her finished works. Featuring approximately 40 objects, Betye Saar: Call and Response covers the span of the artist’s career, including work from her early years (1971) through the present day. Addressing spirituality, gender, and race in her art, Saar ruminates and plays with objects and ideas, making sketches inspired by specific found objects in her possession. In her sketchbooks Saar lays out quick visuals for works, jotting down ideas about materials and potential titles for finished pieces. She has also kept more elaborate travel sketchbooks containing exquisitely beautiful watercolors and collages, many with motifs that recur throughout her work, including hearts, eyes, hands, lions, and celestial bodies.

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