Edda Renouf
American, Born 1943
Born in Mexico City where her father was working with the Austrian Surrealist Wolfgang Paalen, Edda Renouf moved back to the United States in 1961 to attend the Sarah Lawrence College in New York, from which she graduated with a BA in 1965, with additional study at the Académie Julian in France. Between 1968 and 1971 she was a student at Colombia University, New York, graduating with an MFA. Returning to France, with a painting fellowship she held her first exhibition at the Galerie Yvon Lambert in 1972. Back in New York by 1974 she met the Vogels through Richard Tuttle and joined their group of artist-friends. She was quoted in the 50x50 catalogue: “They took their time ... looking at my work with full attention [which was] very inspiring to me, and the beginning of our life-long friendship based above all on our mutual devotion and understanding of art.” In 1997 the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Germany held a retrospective, Edda Renouf - Werke 1972-1997, accompanied by music from her husband, the composer Alain Middleton, with whom she collaborated on a joint work of ethchings and cassette tapes in 1977: Overtones. The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, all have her work in their collections. In a statement on her website she describes her technique as a “silent conversation” between herself and her materials. “Breaking away from the traditional approach to linen and paper, which are usually used as grounds on which to paint an image, my working process reveals and uncovers the organic life and abstract energy within the materials.”