Encyclopedia Dubuque
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KURT, Kay
KURT, Kay (Dubuque, IA, Mar. 21, 1944-- ). Kurt attended CLARKE COLLEGE and received a BFA in 1966. In 1968 she completed an MFA in painting from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. As a graduate student, she developed her signature style and subject matter: candy painted up-close and in meticulous detail, often on enormous canvases. Typical candies featured in her works include licorice, bon bons, jordan almonds, jujubes and gummi bears. Her choice of subject reflects her interest in mass production and consumer culture around the world.
Through her friend and fellow artist Jack Beal, Kurt met Ivan C. Karp, then Assistant Director of the Leo Castelli Gallery. Karp showed her work to gallerist Jill Kornblee, who began showing Kurt's paintings at the Kornblee Gallery in New York City in 1968. A year later her work was featured in London's Hayward Gallery Pop Art exhibition, curated by John Russell, then art critic of The Sunday Times, and artist and art critic Suzi Gablik. Kurt was one of the youngest artists included in the exhibition and was also one of the only women. Her work was featured in the 1973 Whitney Biennial and in many other group and solo exhibitions throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Other than a brief tenure in Germany in 1968-69, Kurt remained in the Midwest. She moved to Duluth, Minnesota when her husband, Medieval scholar Klaus Jankofsky, began teaching at the University of Minnesota, Duluth in 1969.
Exhibitions (partial list)
1968 Kornblee Gallery, New York, [Group Show]
1968 Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, "The Big Detail"
1969 Finch College, New York, "The Dominant Woman"
1969 Hayward Gallery, London, England, "Pop Art"
1970 Kornblee Gallery, New York, [One-Woman Show]
1971 Neuberger Art Museum, SUNY Purchase, New York, "New Realism"
1972 Suffolk Museum, Virginia, "Unmanly Art"
1972 Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, "Contemporary Realists"
1973 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Whitney Biennial
1974 Land Art Gallery at Scripps College, Claremont, California, "The Fine Art of Food"
1978 Whitney Museum of American Art, Downtown Branch, New York, "Out of the House"
1978 Kornblee Gallery, New York, "Some Observations About Scale"
1979 Kornblee Gallery, New York, "Grand Paintings" [Ten Year One-Woman Retrospective]
1980 Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN "Kay Kurt: Paintings" [traveling exhibition]
1983 Kornblee Gallery, New York, [One-Woman Show]
1985 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA, "American Realism, 20th Century Drawings and Watercolors"
1991 Museum of Art, Dubuque, Iowa, "A Closer Look" [One-Woman Show]
1995 Artworks Gallery WARM/Duluth Chapter, Minneapolis, Minnesota, [Inaugural Group Show]
1997 Duluth Art Institute, Duluth, MN, "Celebrate: Women in the Arts" [traveling exhibition]
2010 University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, "Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968" [traveling exhibition]
Awards, Grants, Lectures, etc. since 1980)
1981 Women Studies Lecture, University of Minnesota, Duluth
1981 One-week Lecture/Residency, University of Florida, Gainesville
1981 Bush Fellowship for Artists
1982, 84 AVA Nominee
1982 “Art in the Air” Billboard Invitational
1982, 83 Review Panelist for Minnesota State Arts Board Individual Artists Grant
1984 Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota, Duluth lecture
1986 One-day Lecture/Residency, University of Minnesota, Duluth
1989 Jurist for Minnesota Scholastic Art Awards
1989 Minnesota Representative 14th Annual National Drawing Invitational Exhibition, Emporia State University, Kansas (traveling until 1991)
1992 Arrowhead Regional Arts Council Career Development Grant
1995 Inclusion in Dubuque “Art Legacy Anthology” to be entered into the Iowa Archives Permanent Record in the 1996 Sesquicentennial
1999 Tweed Museum, University of Minnesota, Duluth, Artist Lecture Series/UMD Student Art Exhibition Juror
2003 Arrowhead Regional Arts Council Career Development Grant
2006 Inclusion in Pop Art/Women Pew Memorial Grant Study by Sidney Sachs, Director, Rosenwald- Wolf Gallery University of the Arts Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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Source:
"Kay Kurt," Online: http://kaykurt.com/kaykurtresume.htm