Career
Mikus had her first solo exhibition at the Pietrantonia Gallery in New York in 1960. She showed paintings of geometric shapes on sectional canvases to allow the real lines of the joined canvases to interact with the painted shapes on the surfaces. In 1963, she exhibited at Pace Gallery in Boston. Later in New York City, she was making monochromatic works of black, white, and gray painted on uneven supports made from pieces of wood fitted together. Thickly painted and sanded many times so that the color became like a skin molded by and integral to the bumpy structure beneath, these works, called Tablets are distinguished by a play of light and shadow on the surfaces that provides an organic sense of movement. Her show at Pace Gallery also coincided with the beginning of her “paperfolds” (the term she uses for her works of folded paper). When asked to design an announcement for the show in N.Y.C., she spontaneously made seven folds on a sheet a paper, opened it up and handed it over as the flyer. From that point on, folding paper became an important part of her creative process.
In 1964, Mikus showed with Pace Gallery in New York City. Her work was gaining recognition and Dorothy Miller, well-known curator, chose a white Tablet painting for the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as a gift from Louise Nevelson. In 1966, Mikus won a Guggenheim Fellowship.
In the late 1960s, as Minimalism was gaining popularity, Mikus changed the direction of her work dramatically. According to Robert Hobbs, she was “opting for new freedom,” and began making cartoon-like paintings of boats, planes, trains, and dragons. Again, many saw her work as ahead of its time as she created these figurative images. The work was seen by some as drawing upon the Eastern philosophies of koans (riddles), in which she drew upon the humanist style of art. Ivan Karp from OK Harris Gallery showed her work and Mikus had four solo shows, in 1971, 72, 73, and 74. These paintings bear resemblance to Neo-Expressionist painting but pre-date them. Hobbs associates them with similar directions taken by artists Alfred Leslie and Philip Guston, around the same time.
By the early 1980s, when Neo-Expressionism was at the height of its popularity, Mikus returned to making abstract works, working on canvas and developing her paperfolds to a larger scale. In 2006-2007, she had an important exhibition at The Drawing Center, New York, NY, in which she showed 150 works dating from 1959-2006.
Read more about this topic: Eleanore Mikus
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