Dorothy Iannone, The Icelandic Saga, 1989, Silkscreen on cloth, 175 × 388 cm, Edition of 14
Courtesy of Archivio Conz, Berlin
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- Dorothy Iannone (b. 1933 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, lives and works in Berlin, Germany) is widely regarded as a symbol of female sexual liberation. Her work has primarily focused on eroticism and intimacy as an expression of the divine union of body and mind. During the 1960s, her figurative paintings, almost ornamental and often reminiscent of the frescoes of the Byzantine and medieval periods, were repeatedly objects of bitter criticism and censure due to their erotic content. Her magnetic visionary works are often concerned with the subject of love, with individual stories, myths, and legends, as well as personal experiences and feelings, interwoven throughout. Iannone won the Berlin Art Prize in 1976, and her works are included in the mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien in Vienna, the NYLO – Living Art Museum in Reykjavik, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, among other institutions. She has been featured at the Whitney Biennial (2005) and the Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna (2006) and held solo exhibitions at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York (2009), the New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 (2014), and the Berlinische Galerie (2014). A major retrospective was held at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark in 2022.