Born 1955 in Detroit, MI
Lives and works in New York, NY
Amy Sillman has become one of the most influential figures of 21st century painting, reinvigorating a new form of abstract expressionism as she moves across media seamlessly, integrating elements such as collage, drawing and printmaking into the same practice. Sillman considers drawing to be the point of departure for all her work. She however explores more gestural modes of production in her inkjet-printed and silkscreened canvases, zines and more recently in her animated iPhone videos, in which she brings her digitally drawn figures to life, as a reflection of her preferred media of painting and drawing with their respective boundaries.
A retrospective exhibition of works by Amy Sillman will take place at Kunstmuseum Bern in 2024, travelling to Ludwig Forum, Aachen in 2025. A comprehensive presentation of paintings on paper by the artist was on view in the exhibition The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani at the The 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Sillman has held solo exhibitions at major international institutions, most recently at the Arts Club of Chicago (2019); The Camden Arts Center, London (2018) and Kunsthaus Bregenz (2015), as well as group shows at the Lenbachhaus, Munich (2018); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016); Tate Modern, London (2015) and MoMA, New York (2015).
Her work was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and can be found in the permanent collections of the MoMA, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; Morderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Institute of Chicago; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and many more.
Sillman has won numerous prizes and been awarded fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004 and a First Award from the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Sillman teaches the MFA Program at Bard College. In addition, she recently curated an Artist’s Choice show at the MoMA titled The Shape of Shape which opened in 2019.