Lee Bontecou

We authenticate, certify, issue certificates of authenticity (COA), appraise the value and broker the sale of sculpture, a drawing, or print by Lee BONTECOU.

American

Born in 1931, Providence, Rhode Island.

Died in 2022, Florida, aged 91.

She spent most of her life in the United States. She lived in New York until 1970, when she moved to first Pennsylvania, then Florida. She also travelled to Europe, including Greece and Italy in 1957–1958.

Typical Subject Matter:

She typically worked as an abstract sculptor and draughtswoman. Some of her works evoke organic forms such as cocoons and eggs, while most seem to derive from images of galaxies or micro-organisms.

Typical Style:

She is renowned for her abstract compositions in shades of brown, beiges, and blacks. Both her sculptures and works on paper are composed of segments, organised around circular vacuum zones. Her monumental constructions are thus made of circular holes and voids, built in segments of textile stretched over welded reinforcements protruding from the surface of the work. She transcribes the same shapes in her works on paper.

Some of her works hang from the ceiling like mobiles, but most are hung on the wall like canvases or placed on a free-standing plinth.

Typical Material and Media:

In the 1960s, the artist used all kinds of detritus, including post bags, materials from army surplus, and washing machine wrecks.

More generally, she made extensive use of metal and industrial materials, welds as well as organic materials, which she used in her sculptural work. Among the materials she assembled to produce her sculptures are welded iron, canvas, wire, velvet, leather, wood, lacquer, ink, and epoxy. Some of her works also include light. In the 1970s, she also used porcelain.

She furthermore worked in graphite and soot on paper, and used lithography, etching, and aquatint on paper for her prints.

If you own a sculpture, a drawing, or a print by or attributed to Lee Bontecou, we would like to learn about it. Please send us photos or contact us at [email protected]. You will generally receive a response within 24 hours.