Description
‘No Time Toulouse’ by Anita Kunz
Artist: Anita Kunz
Title: ‘No Time Toulouse’
Medium: Acrylic on Panel
Dimensions: 23″ x 23″ (Framed)
Framing: Framed in Gold Frame
Year of Creation: 2019
About the Artwork:
This piece is part of a REDUX series I’ve been working on for several years, part of an upcoming book that will be released in the fall of 2020. Here is a description of intent with the work:
“Only about 5% of art currently in Museums is by women artists. In the art market, women’s art generally sells for around one tenth of the price of our male counterparts’ work. “ Wilson Sayre
“Artforum magazine is telling us that the top two thirds of the art world is mired in self-perpetuating, self-replicating sexism: More art by men is shown in large galleries because more art by men has been shown and sold in large galleries. And the result is not just about what gets shown, but what that teaches us about what is worth showing. Nearly a half-century on from feminism, simply being a woman is a revolutionary act.” Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine art critic
I have been an artist and illustrator for over four decades. My work has been widely, regularly and internationally published in and on the covers of Rolling Stone magazine, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone magazine, Time and The New York Times to name just a few. I was lauded with an Order of Canada (my country’s highest civilian honour), and two Honorary Doctorates.
Recently I began a body of work that attempts to address the nuances and complexities of gender disparity in the art world. I am calling it “An Alternative History of Art, When History becomes Herstory”. Initial reviews are postitive.
Author Steve Heller writes in Print Magazine: “The Alternative History of Art by A.E.Kunz,” is a compliment, of sorts, to the great historical omnibuses by Sir E. H. Gombrich and H. W. Janson
LA Weekly art critic Shana Rhys Dembrot writes: They say Art History is the history of styles — but of course it’s much more than that. Like flies trapped in amber, the evolution of artistic vision contains within itself the full parade of society’s priorities, standards of beauty, balances of power, forms of religion, war, and governance, aesthetic tastes, and all manner of demonstrations of values and ideas about race, class, gender, morality, science, sexuality, and the nature of reality. According to artist Anita Kunz, it is therefore alarming and unacceptable to realize that this entire epic sweep — even including its most progressive and avant-garde moments — has been overwhelmingly rendered from the point of view of straight white men. Art History, it seems, is due for a makeover
About the Artist:
(Artist Bio)
Canadian by birth, Anita Kunz has lived in London, New York and Toronto, and has been widely published in countries including the USA, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Norway, South Africa, Holland, Portugal, France, Canada and England.
Her socially and politically themed work has been seen in major publications such as Time magazine, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, The New York Times, Newsweek, Sony Music, Random House Publishing and many others.
Articles about her work have appeared in Graphis and Novumgebrauchsgrafik magazines (Switzerland), Communication Arts and Step by Step magazine (USA), Idea, Illustration and Creation magazines (Japan), Applied Arts and Nuvo (Canada) and The Design Journal (Korea).
She has produced cover art for many publications including Rolling Stone Magazine, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Time Magazine, Newsweek Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine. She has also illustrated more than fifty book jacket covers.
Anita frequently teaches workshops and lectures at universities and institutions internationally including the Smithsonian and the Corcoran in Washington DC. She has lectured in such far flung places as India and Istanbul.
Her summer workshops have regularly been conducted at The Illustration Academy in Sarasota Florida and at the Masters of Art degree program at Syracuse University.
She has been honoured with many prestigious awards and medals and her critically acclaimed paintings and sculptures have appeared in galleries and museums worldwide including the Normal Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts, the Museum or American Illustration in New York City, and the Teatrio Cultural Association in Rome Italy.
Her works are in the permanent collections at the Library of Congress, The Canadian. Archives in in Ottawa, The McCord Museum in Montreal, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, and a number of her Time Magazine covers are in the permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.
In 1987 she showed a collection of her works at Canada House in Trafalgar Square, London England.
From 1988 to 1990 she was one of two artists chosen by Rolling Stone Magazine to produce a monthly Illustrated History of Rock and Roll endpaper.
In 1995 she had a solo show in Washington DC at the Govinda Gallery.
In 1997 she had a one woman show at the Foreign Press office in New York City. That same year she received the Les Usherwood Lifetime Achievement award from the Advertising and Design Club of Canada.
In 1998 she had a solo show at the Creation Gallery in Tokyo Japan.
In 2000 she was invited to speak as one of The New Yorker magazine cover artists at the annual New Yorker Festival In New York, and in 2001 she was invited to speak at ideaCity Toronto, a think tank of luminaries from the fields of medicine, politics, science and the arts in Toronto. She has also spoke there on two subsequent occasions as well. Also in 2000 The Society of Illustrators Museum of American Illustration in New York mounted a mid career retrospective of her work.
From 2000 to 2003 she served on the board of directors of ICON, The Illustration Conference.
In the fall of 2003 she was the first Canadian and the first woman to have a solo show at the Library of Congress Swann Gallery in Washington DC.
In 2004 she served as chair for the Society of Illustrators annual exhibit and the following year she served as chair of the Museum committe there.
In spring of 2007 Anita gave a short presentation about her New Yorker covers at the prestigious TED conference in Monterey California.
She was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts in 2009. That same year she also received the Hamilton King award of excellence from the Society of Illustrators Museum of American Illustration for best illustration of the year. She was also named one of the fifty most influential women in Canada by The National Post newspaper.
She was inducted into the American Museum of Illustration Hall of Fame in 2017. Also in 2017, The Toronto Arts and Letters Club gave her the JEH MacDonald award.
In 2018, Canada Post released a postage stamp honouring her work. Also in 2018, The Ontario College of Art and Design, her alma mater, presented her with the “Alumni of Influence” award.
She received an Honorary Doctorate from The Ontario College of Art and Design University in 2010 and a second Honorary Doctorate from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston in 2015.
She has been appointed Officer of the Order of Canada, her country’s highest civilian honour and received Her Highness Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee Medal of Honour.
This year, in spring 2019 she was invited to lecture at the EG conference in Carmel, California.