Stella Waitzkin

Bio

Stella Waitzkin was born in 1920 in New York City. Waitzkin began her artistic career in the 1950s after marrying Abe Waitzkin and having two sons. She started by studying painting with Hans Hofmann and life drawing with Williem de Kooning in New York City. In 1959, Waitzkin rejected the conventionality of her married life, filed for a divorce, and relocated permanently to New York City. By the 1960s and early 1970s, Waitzkin was fully in the abstract expressionist movement and expanded beyond painting and started working in sculpture. While her early sculptures were made of glass, she soon settled into the medium of polyester resin. Beginning in the 1970s, Waitzkin’s subject matter turned fully towards books. She made most pieces and collections of pieces entirely out of resin but occasionally included a real book. With this shift to focus on books, Waitzkin was part of a movement that treated modern books as works of art, much like ancient scrolls or illuminated manuscripts. To help detract from the fact that text in a book can often be misleading, Waitzkin often made the text disorienting or unreadable to emphasize the book as a form. Waitzkin’s art was exhibited across the United States and Europe and she also received many achievements for her work. Stella Waitzkin died in 2003 at the age of 83.