Sylvia Edwards

Sylvia Anne Edwards (30 January 1937–25 October 2018) was an American abstract artist. Edwards first exhibited her work in 1975, and would be featured in more than thirty solo exhibitions in the US, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa during her lifetime.

Biography
Sylvia Edwards was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Sylvia (née Mailloux) and Junius Edwards. Her father was a music impresario. In the 1940s, he hired big bands such as Harry James, Duke Ellington, and Tommy Dorsey, and founded a magazine, Ballroom and Orchestra, a forerunner for DownBeat. Edwards' mother encouraged her to draw and instilled in her a love for color. Edwards spent summers in a country house in Uxbridge, Massachusetts.

She was accepted at Massachusetts College of Art, which she attended from 1954 to 1957. Lawrence Kupferman, a Modernist painter who introduced his students to the work of Georges Braque and Piet Mondrian, and to the dynamics of cityscapes, sparked her interest in abstract art.

She left college to marry an Iranian student, Sadredin Golestaneh, who was studying to become an electronic engineer. Their first daughter, Shirin, was born in 1958. They then moved to Philadelphia, where their second child, Nader, was born in 1960. In 1961, the family moved to Tehran, Iran.

Her third child, Leila, was born in 1966 in Southern Iran. Edwards' husband encouraged the building of a studio for her on the lower level of their house.

Edwards moved to Switzerland in 1975, before settling in London in 1977. She summered and painted in her studio on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She resided in England until she died in 2018.

Solo exhibitions

 * London, England, Grosvenor Gallery, 2003
 * London, England, The Chelsea Arts Club, 2000
 * Boca Grande, Florida, The Galleria, 2000
 * Falmouth, Massachusetts, Gallery Szent Gyorgi, 1998
 * Boca Grande, Florida, The Galleria, 1998
 * Oxford, England, CCA Gallery, 1996
 * Provincetown, Massachusetts, Sola Gallery, 1993
 * Vero Beach, Florida, Munson Gallery, 1992
 * Braunschweig, Germany, Jaeshke Gallery, 1991
 * Chatham, Massachusetts, Munson Gallery, 1991
 * Johannesburg, South Africa, Natalie Knight Gallery, 1991
 * Tokyo, Japan, Bankamura, 1991
 * Tokyo, Japan, Gallery K. Hyazaki Prefecture, 1991
 * Tokyo, Japan, Mitsukoshi Mihonbashi Branch, 1991
 * London, England, Berkley Square Gallery, 1991
 * Tokyo, Japan, Sony Plaza, 1991
 * Sarasota, Florida, The Salon Gallery, 1990
 * London, England, CCA Gallery, 1990
 * Singapore, Art Base Gallery, 1989
 * Tokyo, Japan, CCA Gallery, 1989
 * Osaka, Japan, The Nii Gallery, 1989
 * London, England, The Berkeley Square Gallery, 1988
 * Guernsey, Channel Isles, Coach House Gallery, 1986
 * London, England, Christopher Hull Gallery, 1985
 * London, England, Hamiltons Gallery, 1982
 * Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Morehead Planetarium (UNC), 1982
 * Boston, Massachusetts, Parkman House, 1982
 * Boston, Massachusetts, Boston City Hall, 1981
 * London, England, Hamiltons Gallery, 1980
 * Alexandria, Egypt, Museum of Fine Arts, 1980
 * Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, Old Sculpin Gallery, 1979
 * London, England, Belgrave Gallery, 1978
 * Geneva, Switzerland, CERN, 1977
 * Rolle, Switzerland, CH Gallery, 1976
 * Tehran, Iran, Iran American Society, 1975

Public collections

 * Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom
 * Cape Museum of Fine Arts (Cape Cod), Dennis, Massachusetts
 * Museum of Fine Arts, Alexandria, Egypt
 * London Lighthouse, London, United Kingdom
 * Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, Indiana

Selected criticism
Infinite Softness
 * "The works of Sylvia Edwards Golestaneh have an affinity with Japanese wood-cuts and the artist has brought to realization the innate character and possibilities of watercolour: flow of colours and lines in space, poetry of shapes and themes.
 * This gentleness seems to touch the world and transform it, even perpetuate it in the calm pastel hues and the satisfying and warm pulse of tints which remain pure and fresh when merged, especially when they embark on a dialogue of an intimate nature.
 * One sees elegant vases shooting forth delicate, flowering branches, villages and traditional structures, flowering spring landscapes or those of winter covered with their silent layer of snow.
 * In this calm painting the figurative becomes 'tachist' or even 'cubist' but always indistinct, nebulous, gently stirring.
 * These gentle country themes take, on occasion, directions where one may conjure up some sort of hidden frivolity, secret and introspective which introduces into this charming atmosphere of sincerity, several passionate touches which are the subtle spice of peace and serenity."

Jacques SIMON: Journal de Téhéran, April 1975


 * "Her flower paintings glow as if with inner light—taking on the living vibrancies"

Mel Gooding: Arts Review, 1988


 * "Each time Edwards gives her kaleidoscopic mind a shake, we get a splendidly lush yet pictorially ordered glimpse of chaos. Nothing in these paintings is encoded in a private language... Rather they are unaffected celebrations of the world in its upbeat mode."

Robin Duthy, 1988