Len Lye, artist and art
Born July 5 1901, Birth Christchurch, New Zealand.
Died May 15 1980 deathWarwick, New York, USA.
Style and technique, exhibitions: Kinetic Art, Video, Sydney Biennale,Artist biography, artworks, statement, interview, review, exhibition:
An experimental film-maker, poet, painter, kinetic sculptor, eccentric and ebullient personality, Len Lye is one of New Zealand’s most widely-known modernist artists. The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery is home to the archives and studio collection of the Len Lye Foundation. Born in Christchurch in 1901 and largely self-educated, Lye was driven by a life-long passion for motion, energy and the possibility of composing them as a form of art. Lye’s interests took him far from New Zealand; after sojourns in the South Pacific, Lye moved to London and then New York, where he became known as an intensely creative film-maker and kinetic sculptor…
"One morning, it had been raining all night, and there were these marvellous fast little scuddy clouds in the blue sky. As I was looking at those clouds I was thinking, wasn’t it Constable… who sketched clouds trying to convey their motions? Well, I thought, why clouds, why not just motion? Why pretend they are moving, why not just move something? All of a sudden it hit me – if there was such a thing as
composing music, there could be such a thing as composing motion. After all there are melodic figures, why can’t there be figures of motion?".
A Colour Box (videos)
Untitled (Life under the sea)
Auctions & Auction Results
From leading auction houses worldwide, Len Lye on Mutualart
© the-artists.org 1998 -2012  |