About the artist:

Martha Nilsson Edelheit was born in New York City, where she lived and worked for most of her life. In 1993, she moved to Sweden and currently lives outside Stockholm. For some thirty years, the human figure was a dominant and dynamic element in Martha Edelheit's art, yet Edelheit was never a realist. For her, the human form is at once strong and vulnerable, sexual and unidealized, tangible and mysterious. Following her arrival in Sweden, the human figure was largely replaced by animal imagery. Throughout her working life, Edelheit has avoided traditional illusions of space and has embraced the materiality of art. Her recent work continues to “play with shape, size, scale, transparency and density, pastel and vibrant color,” as the artist describes it. In 1960, Edelheit had her first solo exhibition at the Reuben Gallery in New York. Since then, she has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows. In New York, her work has been featured at Judson Gallery, Byron Gallery, Artists Space, A.I.R. Gallery, Women’s Interart Center, and SOHO 20 Gallery. Elsewhere in the United States, she has had solo exhibitions at O.K. Harris Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts; Evanston Art Center in Evanston, Illinois; Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In Sweden, she has had solo shows at Wetterling Gallery, Galleri Hovet, and Galleri Cupido in Stockholm; Medborgarhuset in Smedstorp; Galleri Strömbom in Uppsala; and Konstpaus in Ekerö. Solo exhibitions of her work have also been held at Gallery BE' 19 in Helsinki, Atelier 2000 in Vienna, and Galerie Carinthia in Klagenfurt, Austria. Edelheit has been in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Queens Museum, Brooklyn Museum, The New York Cultural Center, and The New School Art Center in New York; the Wadsworth Atheneum in Harford, Connecticut; and numerous others in North America and Europe. She was Artist-in-Residence at The Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Cincinnati, and Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; Guest Lecturer at Montclair State College in New Jersey and The New School in New York; and Visiting Artist at The California Institute of the Arts. In the 1970s, Edelheit made experimental films which were screened in the United States and Europe. Hats, Bottles & Bones: A Portrait of Sari Dienes (1977) was shown at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Edelheit’s work is in many private collections in Europe and North America. ARTIST'S STATEMENT I continue to work with the theme of animals in the countryside, which has absorbed me since 1994 when I moved from New York City to a rural area outside of Stockholm. In this contemporary world, filled with extreme threat, horror and violence, destruction of the environment, and disastrous abuse of all our resources, human and natural, I want to look at what is still here. My most recent series of paintings are life-size sheep, usually looking directly at the viewer. They are friendly, independent, particular individuals. The sheep are surrounded by, and enmeshed in, a grid. This underlying geometric format, chicken wire covered in papier-mâché, is the painting surface. This surface, a mosaic of hexagonal forms, becomes a random pattern of intense color, evoking imaginary landscapes. Some of my earlier works are also on a chicken wire and papier-mâché base. They, too, are sheep in landscapes. The grid in these works is a minor part of the dialogue, a base note continuum. Groups and clusters of sheep (or goats in one painting) wander or rest within their landscape. Their solid images are replicated in wire or ink or acrylic drawing, or are shadows cast from the wire constructions of their shapes. The dialogue between wire line, ink line, cast shadow and solid form, is intense, poetic, and sometimes political. And the Lion Lies Down with the Lamb and Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing were painted after George W. Bush was elected. They also refer to Edward Hicks’s Peaceable Kingdom (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), a pictorial dream of reconciled differences that idyllically and peacefully inhabit the same space, and Henri Rousseau’s more ferocious jungle dreams. Many of the small sculptures are conversations between the linear and the solid, the wire-drawn line and the shadow, as are the drawings made from the cast shadows of the wire sculptures. ONE-WOMAN SHOWS 1964 OK. Harris Gallery. Provincetown. Mass. 1966 Byron Gallery 1973 Artists Space 1974 Evanston An Center. Evanston. Illinois 1975 Wilson College. Chambersburg. Pa. GROUP EXHIBITIONS 1961 Martha Jackson Gallery New Forms, New Media 1964 Wadsworth Atheneum, Figure Show 1964 Byron Gallery, 100 American Drawings 1965 Guggenheim Museum. 11 from the Reuben 1965 Byron Gallery. Box Show 1965 Van Bovenkamp Gallery Erotica Show 1972 Gedok. American Woman Artist Show. Hamburg. Germany 1972 Stamford Museum, Woman in 1OO Arts 1972 C.W. Post College, Woman in the Arts 1972 David Stuart Gallery. Cup Show 1972 Suffolk County Museum. Womanly Art 1972 New School Ad Center. Humor. Satire. irony 1973 New York Cultural Center, Women Choose Women 1973 Erotic An Gallery 1973 Wyndham College, Putney Vermont 1974 Erotic AR Gallery 1974 Self-Image Show. Woman's interart Center 1974 Albin-Zeglen Gallery 1974 Hobart & William Smith Colleges - Eye of Women 1974 Performing Arts Foundation. Huntington, Li. 1975-76 Queens Museum, Sons and Others, travelling in NYS to: Alfred ISUNYI Schoectady Museum St. Thomas Aquinas. Sparkhiil N.Y Rockland Country Community College. Suffern New York Cultural Center Three Centuries of the American Nuns. travelled to: Minneapolis Museum for the Arts Campbell Gallery University of Houston Texas Lincoln Center Avery Fisher Hall Cork Gallery Floating Gallery Exhibit Brooklyn Museum Works on Paper Women in the Arts Buecker and Harpsichord Recent Portraits of Sar: Dienes Rutgers University Floating Gallery Exhibit Artists Choice. Figurative Ad in New York 5 Soho Galleries 1977 Contemporary Issues: Works on Paper by Women. Women's Bldg.. Los Angeles University Univemity of Houston Cambell Gallery Texas McGraw Hill Gallery Private EyS(l) Floating Gallery 1976 PS. I, Sister Chapel Graduate Center. CUNY. Women Artists '76 Elisabeth Weiner Gallery New York Art Gallery. Stony Brook. SUNY. New York logher Gallery. New York THEATRE PRODUCTIONS 1971 Triangle Theatre - Set Design and Construction and Masks "The Wonderful Adventures of Tyl" by Jonathon Levy 1971 New Dramatists Workshop - Set Design Sod Construction "Message from Garcia." "Was I Good?" two one-act plays by Rosalyn Drexier 1974 "Breaks Leg" Ira Levin Urgent Theater - Set design and construction 1979 "The Whore and the Poet" by Sandra Hochman. 3 set pieces FILM SHOWS 1973 New York Cultural Center Women's Film Festival Women's Interart Center Erotic Garden. Film Environment California Institute of the Arts. Film Environment California Institute of the Arts. Film Show Woman Space. Venice, California. Film Show Woodstock Film Festival WBAI Studio C. Woman Artist as Filmmaker Cubiculo. Super 8 Experiment 1974 Graz Museum. Graz. Austria Anist Space. New York Museum of 26th Century Vienna. Austria 3rd Annual Film by Women Festival. Anneoberg Center. Philadelphia. Pa. Basel Art Fair. Basel. Switzerland 1975 College Art Association. Washington DC 1976 John Jay Community College Staten Island Museum Montclair College New Jersey C.C.N.Y Wilson Coriege. Pa Larrisy Gallery. New York Staten Island Community College Paramont Screening Room Ashawagh Hail. Fast Hampton New York Hudson River Museum LINK. Inc.. Lyobrook. New York Yonkers An Association University of California. San Diego Tin Palace. New York Rockland County Art Center Portland Museum. Oregon Rutgers University New Jersey FILM SHOWS 1976 Soho Center for the Arts Bali-Kino Berlin 1977 Museum of Modern Art. New York Brooklyn Museum New York Women's Interart Center Puma College. Tucson. Arizona Fordham University New York Anthology Film Archives. New York Hampshire College. Mass Montclair College. New Jersey International Culture Center. Vienna. Austria Gallery Saint Stefan Vienna. Austria John Jay College. New York Arizona State College International Women's Year Coot. Houston. Texas 1976 Women's Caucus for Art. New York Anthology Film Archives Washington Womens' Center 1979 Global Village. NewYork