Vija Celmins ( ;
[Hilarie M. Sheets and Randy Kennedy (September 24, 2015)]
''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''. ; ; born October 25, 1938) is a
Latvian American visual artist best known for photo-realistic paintings and drawings of natural environments and phenomena such as the ocean, spider webs, star fields, and rocks.
Her earlier work included
pop sculptures and monochromatic representational paintings. Based in
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, she has been the subject of over forty solo exhibitions since 1965, and major retrospectives at the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
,
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...
,
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum).
LACMA was founded in 1961 ...
,
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...
,
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an modernism, artistic and cultural centre on The Mall (London), The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps a ...
, London and the
Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...
, Paris.
Biography
Vija Celmiņa was born on October 25, 1938, in
Riga, Latvia
Riga ( ) is the capital, primate, and largest city of Latvia. Home to 591,882 inhabitants (as of 2025), the city accounts for a third of Latvia's total population. The population of Riga metropolitan area, which stretches beyond the city lim ...
.
Upon the
Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940
The Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940 refers to the military occupation of the Republic of Latvia by the Soviet Union under the provisions of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany and its Secret Additional Protocol signed i ...
, during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, her parents fled with her and her older sister Inta
to Germany, then under the
Nazi
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
regime; after the end of the war, the family lived in a United Nations supported Latvian refugee camp in
Esslingen am Neckar
Esslingen am Neckar (Swabian German, Swabian: ''Esslenga am Neckor''; until 16 October 1964 officially '' Eßlingen am Neckar'') is a town in the Stuttgart Region of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany, seat of the Esslingen (district), Distri ...
,
Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg ( ; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a states of Germany, German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million i ...
. In 1948, the
Church World Service relocated the family to the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
, briefly in New York City, then in
Indianapolis, Indiana
Indianapolis ( ), colloquially known as Indy, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Indiana, most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana, Marion ...
. Sponsored by a local Lutheran church,
[ her father found work as a carpenter, and her mother in a hospital laundry.] Vija was ten, and spoke no English, which caused her to focus on drawing, leading her teachers to encourage further creativity and painting.
In 1955, she entered the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, where she has said that for the first time in her life, she did not feel like an outsider.[ In 1961 she won a Fellowship to attend a Summer session at ]Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
, where she met Chuck Close
Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealism, photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits ...
and Brice Marden
Nicholas Brice Marden Jr. (October 15, 1938 – August 9, 2023) was an American artist generally described as minimalist, although his work has roots in abstract expressionism, color field painting. and lyrical abstraction. He lived and worked i ...
, who would remain close friends.[ It was during this time she began to study Italian monotone still life painter ]Giorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi (July 20, 1890 – June 18, 1964) was an Italian painter and printmaker widely known for his subtly muted still-life paintings of ceramic vessels, flowers, and landscapes—their quiet, meditative quality reflecting the artist's ...
, and painted abstract works. In 1962 she graduated from Herron with a BFA, and moved to Venice, Los Angeles
Venice is a neighborhood of the City of Los Angeles within the Westside region of Los Angeles County, California, United States.
Venice was founded by Abbot Kinney in 1905 as a seaside resort town. It was an independent city until 1926, whe ...
, to pursue an MFA at the University of California at Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the Ca ...
, graduating in 1965. At UCLA, she enjoyed freedom, being far from her parents, leading to further artistic exploration.[ In 1978, she was an artist-in-residence, funded by the ]Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA)
The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA, ) was a United States federal law enacted by the United States Congress, Congress, and signed into law by President Richard Nixon on December 28, 1973 to train workers and provide them with jobs ...
, at the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art. She lived in Venice until 1980, painting and sculpting, and working as an instructor at the California State University, Los Angeles
California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA) is a public research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is part of the California State University system. Cal State LA offers 142 bachelor's degree programs, 122 m ...
, the University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...
and California Institute of the Arts
The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a Private university, private art school in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for ...
, in Valencia.
In 1981, following an invitation to teach at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, she moved permanently to New York City, wanting to be closer to the artists and art that she liked. She also returned to painting, which she had abandoned for twelve years, working during that time mainly in pencil. She later used woodcut
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that ...
s, and eraser and charcoal. Since that time, she has worked out of a cottage in Sag Harbor, New York
Sag Harbor is an Administrative divisions of New York#Village, incorporated village in Suffolk County, New York, United States, in the Administrative divisions of New York#Town, towns of Southampton, New York, Southampton and East Hampton (town) ...
, and a studio loft on Crosby Street in Soho
SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...
, Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
. During the 1980s, she also taught at the Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly known as Cooper Union, is a private college on Cooper Square in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-s ...
and the Yale University School of Art.
Work
Working in California in the 1960s, Vija Celmins' early work, generally in photorealistic painting and pop-inspired sculpture, was representational. She recreated commonplace objects such as TVs, lamps, pencils, erasers and the painted monochrome reproductions of photographs. A common underlying theme in the paintings was violence or conflict, such as war planes, handguns and riot imagery. A retrospective of the 1964–1966 work was organized by the Menil Collection in cooperation with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2010. She has cited Malcolm Morley and Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker. Considered a central figure in the development of American postwar art, he has been variously associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and ...
as influences in this period.
In the late 1960s through the 1970s, she abandoned painting, and focused on working in graphite pencil, creating highly detailed photorealistic drawings, based on photographs of natural elements such as the ocean's or Moon's surface, the insides of shells, and closeups of rocks. Critics frequently compare her laborious approach to contemporaries Chuck Close
Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealism, photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits ...
and Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter (; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced Abstract art, abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, photographs and Glass art, glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important con ...
, and she has cited Giorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi (July 20, 1890 – June 18, 1964) was an Italian painter and printmaker widely known for his subtly muted still-life paintings of ceramic vessels, flowers, and landscapes—their quiet, meditative quality reflecting the artist's ...
, a master of the pale grey still life, as a major influence.[ These works also share with Richter's an apparent randomness and thus apparently dispassionate attitude. It is as if any photograph would do as a source for a painting, and the choice is apparently unimportant. This is of course not the case, but the work contains within it the impression that the image is chosen at random from an endless selection of possible alternative images of similar nature.
At the end of this period, from 1976 to 1983, Celmins also returned to sculpture in a way that incorporated her interest in photorealism. She produced a series of bronze cast, acrylic painted stones, exact replicas of individual stones she found along the Rio Grande in Northern New Mexico, with eleven examples held at MoMA.] By 1981, she returned to painting, from this point forward working also with woodcuts and printing, and substantially in charcoal with a wide variety of erasers - often exploring negative space, selectively removing darkness from images,[ and achieving subtle control of grey tones.][
From the early 1980s forward, Celmins focused on the constellations, moon and oceans using these various techniques, a balance between the abstract and photorealism.] By 2000, she had begun to produce haunting and distinctive spider webs, again negative images in oil or charcoal, to much critical acclaim, with particular note of her meticulous surface development and luminosity. She has said that all these works are based on photographs, and she imparts substantial effort on the built-up surfaces of the images.[ In a 1996 review of her 30-year retrospective at London's Institute of Contemporary Art, ''The Independent'' cited her as "American art's best-kept secret."]
Critics have often noted that Celmins' works since the late 1960s - the moon scapes, ocean surfaces, star fields, shells, and spider webs, often share the characteristic of not having a reference point: no horizon, depth of field, edge or landmarks to put them into context. The location, constellation, or scientific name are all unknown - there is no information imparted.
From 2008, Celmins returned to objects and representative work, with paintings of maps and books, as well as many uses of small graphite tablets - hand held black boards.[ She also produced series prints of her now well-known waves, spiderwebs, shells and desert floors, many of which were exhibited at the McKee Gallery in June 2010.][ She recently released a new series of prints that includes both night sky and waves mezzotints. These prints were exhibited at the Matthew Marks Gallery in January, February, and March 2018 and the Senior & Shopmaker Gallery in February and March 2018.
Her woodcuts of water can take a year to cut; she has commented that they "remind us of 'the complexity of the simplest things'".
]
Solo exhibitions
Celmins's works have been the subject of over forty solo exhibitions around the world since 1966 (Los Angeles), hundreds of group exhibitions. After her longtime dealer, McKee Gallery in New York, announced its closing in 2015, Celmins is currently represented by Matthew Marks Gallery
Matthew Marks is an art gallery located in the New York City neighborhood of Chelsea, Manhattan, Chelsea and the Los Angeles neighborhood of West Hollywood. Founded in 1991 by Matthew Marks, it specializes in Modern art, modern and contemporary a ...
.
In 2020, the major career survey ''Vija Celmins'', was organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
, in New York and exhibited at the institution's former space MET Brauer. Between 1992 and 1994, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, organized the artist's mid-career retrospective. The show traveled to the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...
, Seattle; the Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...
, Minneapolis; the Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...
, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ori ...
.
Group exhibitions
In 2022, the Hammer Museum
The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...
at University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...
, organized the exhibition ''Joan Didion: What She Means'', curated by The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
theater critic Hilton Als
Hilton Als (born 1960) is an American writer and theater critic. He is a teaching professor at the University of California, Berkeley, an associate professor of writing at Columbia University and a staff writer and theater critic for ''The New Yo ...
. The show traveled to the Pérez Art Museum Miami
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)—officially known as the Jorge M. Pérez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County—is a contemporary art museum that relocated in 2013 to the Maurice A. Ferré Park in Downtown Miami, Florida. Founded in 1984 as the Cent ...
in 2023, and works by Vija Celmins were included alongside artworks by 50 other contemporary artists such as Félix González-Torres, Ana Mendieta
Ana Mendieta (November 18, 1948 – September 8, 1985) was a Cuban-American performance artist, sculptor, painter, and video artist who is best known for her "earth-body" artwork. She is considered one of the most influential Cuban-American ar ...
, Betye Saar
Betye Irene Saar (born July 30, 1926) is an American artist known for her work in the medium of Assemblage (art), assemblage. Saar is a visual storyteller and an accomplished printmaker. Saar was a part of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, w ...
, Maren Hassinger, Silke Otto-Knapp, John Koch, Ed Ruscha, Pat Steir, among others. In 2023, the Kunsthalle Hamburg
The Hamburger Kunsthalle is the art museum of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Germany. It is one of the largest art museums in the country. It consists of three connected buildings, dating from 1869 (main building), 1921 (Kuppelsaal) and ...
hosted the exhibiton ''Vija Celmnis , Gerhard Richter. Double Vision'' (12 May 2023 - 27 August 2023), featuring a dialogue between the two artists.
Notable works in public collections
*''Heater'' (1964) Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...
, New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
*''Torso'' (1964), Menil Collection
The Menil Collection, located in Houston, Texas, refers either to a museum that houses the art collection of founders John de Menil and Dominique de Menil, or to the collection itself of paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs a ...
, Houston
Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...
*''House #1'' (1965), Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
, New York
*''Forest Fire'' (1965-1966), Glenstone
Glenstone is a private Contemporary art, contemporary art museum in Potomac, Maryland, founded in 2006 by American billionaire Mitchell Rales and his wife, Emily Wei Rales. The museum's exhibitions are drawn from a collection of about 1,300 works ...
, Potomac, Maryland
Potomac () is an Unincorporated area#United States, unincorporated community and census-designated place in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it had a population of 47,018. It is named a ...
*''Explosion at Sea'' (1966), Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...
*''Flying Fortress'' (1966), Museum of Modern Art, New York
*''German Plane'' (1966), Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (widely referred to as The Modern) is an art museum of post-World War II art in Fort Worth, Texas with a collection of international modern and contemporary art. Founded in 1892, The Modern is located in the c ...
, Texas
Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...
*''Pencil'' (1966), National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...
, Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
*''Suspended Plane'' (1966), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...
*''Tulip Car #1'' (1966), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
*''Untitled (Double Moon Surface)'' (1969), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed ...
, Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...
, Washington, D.C.
*''Untitled (Ocean)'' (1969), Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) is an List of art museums#North America, art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at ...
*''Untitled (Cassiopeia)'' (1973), Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of modern art, ...
*''Untitled (Medium Desert)'' (1974-1975), Menil Collection, Houston
*''Untitled (Comb)'' (1978), Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum).
LACMA was founded in 1961 ...
*''To Fix the Image in Memory'' (1977-1982), Museum of Modern Art, New York
*''Alliance'' (1982), High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...
, Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...
*''Strata'' (1983), Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
, New York
*''Untitled (Comet)'' (1988), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
*''Night Sky #12'' (1995-1996), Carnegie Museum of Art
The Carnegie Museum of Art is an art museum in the Oakland (Pittsburgh), Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The museum was originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was formerly located ...
, Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
*''Night Sky #19'' (1998), Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...
, London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
*''Untitled #17'' (1998), Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...
, Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
*''Night Sky #20'' (1999), Kunstmuseum Winterthur
The Kunst Museum Winterthur (The Winterthur Museum of Art) is an art museum in Winterthur, Switzerland run by the local ''Kunstverein''. From its beginnings, the activities of the Kunstverein Winterthur were focused on contemporary art – first ...
, Winterthur, Switzerland
*''Night Sky #17'' (2000-2001), Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas
*''Blackboard Tableau #1'' (2007-2010), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
*''Blackboard Tableau #14'' (2011-2015), Glenstone, Potomac, Maryland
In 2005, a major collector of her work, real estate developer Edward R. Broida, donated 17 pieces, covering 40 years of her career, to the Museum of Modern Art, as part of an overall contribution valued at $50 million ($50,000,000). Especially noteworthy were the early and late paintings.
Awards
*1961: Fellowship to Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
Summer Session
*1968: Cassandra Foundation Award[
*1971 & 1976: Artist's Fellowship from ]National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...
[
*1980: ]Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...
[
*1996: ]American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...
Award in Art
*1997: Skowhegan Medal for Painting
*1997: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship[
*2000–2001: Coutts Contemporary Art Foundation Award
*2004 Elected into the ]National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Frederick Styles Agate, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, an ...
*2006: RISD Athena Award for Excellence in Painting[
*2008: Awarded the $10,000 ]Carnegie Prize
The Carnegie Prize is an international art prize awarded by the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It currently consists of a $10,000 cash prize accompanied by a gold medal.
History
The Carnegie Prize was established in 1896, t ...
*2009: Roswitha Haftmann Prize
*2009: Fellow Award in the Visual Arts from United States Artists
United States Artists (USA) is a national arts funding organization based in Chicago. USA is dedicated to supporting living artists and cultural practitioners across the United States by granting unrestricted awards.
Mission
The organization' ...
*2021: Honoree of the Great Immigrants Award
The Great Immigrants Award is an annual initiative by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to honor naturalized citizens of the United States who have made significant contributions to American society, democracy, and culture. Established in 200 ...
, Carnegie Corporation of New York
The Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic fund established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to support education programs across the United States, and later the world.
Since its founding, the Carnegie Corporation has endowed or othe ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips
from PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
series '' Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century'' - Season 2 (2003)
Artcyclopedia page
Vija Celmins at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York
Vija Celmins at the National Gallery of Art
Celmins at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
{{DEFAULTSORT:Celmins, Vija
1938 births
Living people
MacArthur Fellows
Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Artists from Indianapolis
American wood engravers
Wood engravers
Herron School of Art and Design alumni
Artists from Riga
Latvian World War II refugees
Latvian emigrants to the United States
National Academy of Design members
American women printmakers
People from Sag Harbor, New York
20th-century American women painters
20th-century American painters
20th-century American printmakers
21st-century American women painters
21st-century American painters
Immigrants to Germany
20th-century engravers