Roberta Allen
German Lesson, 1981
Two separate mixed media works framed together: watercolor, gouache, ink, wash, laid paper collage (each signed by hand)
Signed twice: each of the separate collages is signed lower right;
Each work is signed individually in graphite pencil lower right
Frame included
Held in the original vintage frame
Measurements (both works in frame
17.5 by 24 by .75
11.5 by 8.75 (Each of two sheet; each signed )
Roberta Allen Biography
Roberta Allen, a native of Boston, MA, graduated from the Boston Museum School and Tufts University. She has exhibited her work; paintings, drawings, prints, collages and mixed media sculpture in numerous group and solo shows throughout the country including; The International Print Center of New York, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Washburn Mulvane Art Museum, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, DeVos Art Museum and many other universities, galleries and art centers in the U.S. She has received several grants and residencies including: Vermont Studio Center, Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, a residency at Penland School of Crafts and was a finalist for a Massachusetts Council for the Arts fellowship. She currently lives and maintains a studio in Asheville, NC
From 1973-81, Roberta Allen showed alongside Sol LeWitt, Robert Ryman, Carl Andre and others at John Weber Gallery in New York. Her conceptual art, combining text and image, has included drawings, collages, artist books, photo/text works, installations, digital prints and sculpture. 30 one-person and over 100 group exhibitions have taken place in galleries and museums internationally. She has work in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum and MoMA among other public and private collections. Her art papers have been acquired by The Smithsonian Archives of American Art.
Her art originates in language. She has explored how language informs our perception of images. Playing with possibility, she creates her own contexts and defines subjective views as facts as she explores human experience. She presents her own interpretations (sometimes humorous) to encourage viewers to reflect upon their subjective experience.
A Tennessee Williams Fellow in Fiction and a Yaddo Fellow, Roberta is a micro and short story writer, novelist and memoirist with nine published books, including her latest, The Princess of Herself, a story collection.
Roberta lived briefly in Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, and Mexico. Her travels, often alone, include Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, Central America, Mali (for the New York Times Magazine) and the Peruvian Amazon which inspired her memoir about her trip alone. Her travels inspired many of her stories and her novel.
