Betye Saar

(American, born 1926)

Betye Saar is an American artist known for assemblage and collage works. With a found-object process like that of Joseph Cornell and Robert Rauschenberg, Saar explores both the realities of African-American oppression and the mysticism of symbols through the combination of everyday objects. “I'm the kind of person who recycles materials but I also recycle emotions and feelings,” the artist has explained. “And I had a great deal of anger about the segregation and the racism in this country.” Saar was a part of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, and her work tackles racism through the appropriation and recontextualization of African-American folklore and icons, as seen in the seminal The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972), a wooden box containing a doll of a stereotypical “mammy” figure. Born on July 30, 1926 in Los Angeles, CA, she studied at the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. Today, her works are held in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others. Saar lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.