User:Mikusart

Eleanore Mikus (born July 25, 1927) is an influential American artist.

Biography
Eleanore Mikus was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1927. The third of four children, Eleanore’s mother was a designer of surgical garments and her father was a farmer and precision toolmaker. Mikus attended kindergarten, elementary, and high school in Detroit. She was drawn to art from an early age and she took her first prize in drawing while still in kindergarten. As a youngster, Mikus continued to draw and paint. Later, Mikus attended Michigan State University, but she left the school in her junior year and married Richard Burns, an army officer. Mikus then traveled to Germany and Austria, and while there she studied art and painted. She later returned to the states in 1953 and in 1956 - 1957 attended the University of Denver and earned a BFA in painting and art history.

Mikus then headed east to New York City in 1959 and had her first solo show of Geometric Merged Canvases at the Pietrantonia Gallery in 1960. She divorced at this time. Mikus began the wooden kinesthetic moving sectional paintings called tablets. These works were monochromatic and kinesthetic, with what seemed to be a moving surface. Each tablet painting was complex and contained blocks of wood that were densely painted over many times with white paint. The tablets were subtle, oddly flowing with quasi-geometric shapes. They featured a soft and natural quality, and the artwork was unlike anything being done at the time. Her work was seen as innovative. Mikus then moved to 76 Jefferson Street, which was at the Lower East Side. John Chamberlain's studio was across the street and Noguchi's was in an adjacent building.

Mikus had her first solo show of all white paintings at the Pace Gallery in Boston in 1963. She also created her first all-white, paperfold flyer and it was mailed out to promote the show.

Needing more space in which to work, Mikus moved to a larger studio in 1964, which was in Hell's Hundred Acres (now known as SoHo), 429 Broome Street, on the 4th floor. The artists Grosvenor and James Rosenquist were in the same building. She met other contemporary artists from that time, including Gotlieb, Rothko, Louise Nevelson Stamos, Ad Rheinhardt, and Stephen Greene. Mikus had her second show of White and Grey Tablets at the Pace Gallery in New York City on 7 West 57th Street, in 1964. The artist Donald Judd was showing at the Green Gallery, which was just down the street from the Pace Gallery. Mikus' work was gaining in recognition and it was at this time that Dorothy Miller, the curator from the Museum of Modern Art, chose a white tablet painting for MoMA as a gift of Louise Nevelson. Mikus was awarded the Guggenheim Fellow in Painting in 1966 and was sponsored by fellow artists, Ad Rheinhardt and Louise Nevelson. Mikus also met pop artists Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol.

In 1966, Mikus began to work on a series of Black Tablet Paintings and Grey Tablet Paintings. She began to experiment with fiberglass, polyurethane, and epoxy paint, which added a new forceful feeling to her tablet paintings. Her art work had an Asian sensibility to it and it was at this time that Mikus began to look at and read about Asian art. She also left the Pace Gallery.

It was then Mikus made the decision to study at the University of Denver and in 1967, Mikus received her Master's of Art in Oriental Art History. Later on, in 1968, she received a Tamarind Grant in Lithography and went to Los Angeles. While there she executed 32 lithograph editions - the majority of the work was hand folded. In the summer of 1969, Mikus received a McDowell Fellowship in Painting and went to New Hampshire.

More artists were beginning to focus and create minimalist art and it was now becoming a movement. It was during the late 1960s and early 1970s, that Mikus changed direction and style to Neo-expressionism. Again, many saw her work as ahead of its time as she created figurative and cartoon like images. Ivan Karp from OK Harris Gallery featured her work and Mikus had four solo shows in 1971, 72, 73, and 74. Photo realist John Salt Ralph, Lawrence Gowing, and other artists such as Duane Hanson and Richard Petibone also showed at OK Harris. During the early 1970s, she taught art at Cooper Union in New York.

Mikus then left for London, England, in 1973, and taught at the Central School of Art and Design. During this four-year period she worked and showed in London. Mikus returned to the states in 1977, and then took a teaching position in art at Cornell University in 1979.

Later, Mikus returned to the Humanist Minimalism style of art in the early 1980s. She started to work on canvas instead of wood and she persisted in working and developing paperfolds on a larger scale. After she renovated in an old 1823 church outside of Ithaca, New York, Mikus continued to work quietly. In 1989 she spent six months in Italy and traveled to Turkey and Greece.

In the early 1990s, Mikus had many group shows in Connecticut and Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Kentucky, Florida, New York City, Buffalo, and Ithaca, N.Y. In 1994 she traveled to the Middle East, Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, and Hong Kong. Later on, in 1998 and 2000, she had two solo shows with the Mitchell Algus Gallery. She also had her first paperfold show with the Claudia Carr Gallery in 1998. In 2000, Mikus traveled to China and Tibet. Also in the same year at the Claudia Carr Gallery, she had a solo show of her drawings, which consisted of faces.

In 2001, Mikus had an Armory Show in New York City. During this same year, Mikus was awarded a grant from Yaddo in Drawing and Painting. It was with this grant that she created new drawings, paintings, and paperfolds. In Tucson, Arizona, her work was shown again in 2004 (called Small Giants) and 2006 (the show was called Fresh Eyes.)

Mikus' work was then featured in a special showing at The Drawing Center in New York City during 2006 and 2007. A grand total of 150 works were chosen from over 1000 works, which spanned the years from 1959 to 2006. This show featured her paintings, reliefs, drawings, and paperfolds. The artwork that she had created in the late 1950s and early 1960s had come full circle. It was her first solo exhibition of work in a major institution and spanned nearly 50 years of art.

She continues to work in her New York City and Upstate New York studios.