Edward Kienholz - Collaboration With Nancy Reddin

Collaboration With Nancy Reddin

In 1981, Ed Kienholz officially declared that all his work from 1972 on should be retrospectively understood to be co-authored by, and co-signed by, his wife and collaborator, Nancy Reddin Kienholz. Collectively, they are referred to as "Kienholz". Their work has been widely acclaimed, particularly in Europe.

In the early 1970s, Kienholz received a grant that permitted him to work in Berlin. His most important works during this period were based on the Volksempfängers (radio receiving apparatus from the National Socialist period in Germany). In 1973 he was guest artist of the German Academic Exchange Service in Berlin.

In 1973, Kienholz and Reddin moved from Los Angeles to Hope, Idaho and for the next twenty years they divided their time between Berlin and Idaho. In 1976 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1977 he opened "The Faith and Charity in Hope Gallery" at their Idaho studio.

Kienholz died suddeny in Idaho on June 10, 1994, from a heart attack while hiking in the mountains near their home. He was buried in a Kienholz installation: Robert Hughes wrote, "is corpulent, embalmed body was wedged into the front seat of a brown 1940 Packard coupe. There was a dollar and a deck of cards in his pocket, a bottle of 1931 Chianti beside him and the ashes of his dog Smash in the back. He was set for the afterlife. To the whine of bagpipes, the Packard, steered by his widow Nancy Reddin Kienholz, rolled like a funeral barge into the big hole."