MIRA LEHR
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Mira
Lehr, a multimedia artist, whose career spans four
decades, is a native New Yorker now living and working in Miami. She is known
for her nature-based imagery that emphasizes light, transparency and layering.
Her work encompasses painting, design, sculpture and video installations.
Processes include non-traditional media such as resin, gunpowder, fire,
Japanese paper, dyes and welded steel.
Lehr graduated from Vassar College with a degree in art history and has studied painting with Robert Motherwell, and James Brooks. She has also studied with James and Nieves Billmyer (seasoned apprentices of the pioneer of modernism, Hans Hofmann). As a young female artist in the 50’s - 60’s, Lehr was at the forefront of abstract expressionism and had much to do with mobilizing the female voice in cities like Miami. There she co-founded the Continuum Gallery, the first women’s co-op in the southeast. In 1969, Lehr was selected to be a participant with Buckminster Fuller on the first World Game Scenario Project at the New York Studio School. Exhibitions include work in American Embassies such as Bulgaria and Mexico City, and national shows such as “New American Paintings Exhibition in Print” by Charlotta Kotik, Brooklyn Museum’s curator of contemporary art, a video, V1, screened at New Museum in New York and the documentary, Dreamscapes, about Lehr, featured in FilmFest at the Letelier Theater in Washington D.C. Other exhibitions include Miami Art Museum’s “Restless: Recent Acquisitions from the MAM Collection”, the Bass Museum’s “Modern Masters of Tapestry” and her most recent solo show “Fathom” at the Flomenhaft Gallery in New York. A major painting, Cosmic Energy, was aqguired for the lobby of the Evelyn Lauder Breast Center of the Sloan Kettering Memorial Center in New York. Another work Solitary Guest VI was just included in the Leonard Lauder collection. Vegetata Mirabellis, a large mixed-media piece, was recently installed in the permanent collection of the Miami Art Museum. The Irving Sandler oral histories have documented Lehr’s work for The Getty Museum Research Center in Los Angeles and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington D.C. The breadth of Mira Lehr’s production includes designs of rugs and installations that are featured in the showrooms of Holly Hunt, Ltd and those of world renowned Stephanie Odegard. Rugs based on Lehr’s designs and produced in Nepal are exhibited and shown throughout the world in many public and private collections. Through her unique experience in the field, Lehr has affected a new generation of young artists by serving as a mentor and collaborator. She has taught master classes with the National YoungArts Foundation and has been artist in residence at the Bascom Summer Programs. Her solo and group exhibitions number over 300. Presently Lehr is represented by the Flomenhaft Gallery in New York and a book about Lehr will be published by Hard Press Editions and Hudson Hills press in the Summer of 2014. |
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