Biography of Rita Ackermann
Rita Ackermann is a Hungarian-American artist known for her construction of compositions that are simultaneously abstract and figurative. Addressing issues of femininity, her large-scale works deal with the opposing impulses of creation and destruction, depicting human forms that seem to disappear and then reappear. Rita Ackermann uses gestural mark-making techniques, and the influence of dance as well as the Abstract Expressionist movement is clear in her layered and fluid canvases.
Born in 1968, Rita Ackermann trained at the University of Fine Arts Budapest. She then moved to New York City—where she continues to live and work today—to study at the The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. The world Rita Ackermann creates in her artworks is often inhabited by overtly sexualized girl-creatures or nymphets in various stages of undressing. Such controversial subject matter immediately gained her attention and notoriety amongst the New York art scene. Her political and erotic works often use monster-like figures to critique the socioeconomic climate in her native Hungary as well as America, her adopted home.
Solo exhibitions of Rita Ackermann’s work have been held at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York, Hauser & Wirth in Zurich, the Swiss Institute in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art in Florida and the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, among others. She has published monographs and artist books, and was featured at the 2008 Whitney Biennial.