Vija Celmins is a master of subtle visual power. She is best known for her captivating
paintings and drawings depicting galaxies lunar surfaces desert floors oceans and spider
webs. Her works are not monumental they are painted with a restrained palette and defy quick
vision. But once you get involved with them your gaze gets caught and they unfold their
fascination and great beauty. This catalogue presents all 90 works exhibited at the Fondation
Beyeler. Several commentaries by the artist on her works are inserted between the image pages
most of them published for the first time. Contributions by renowned authors and artists
including Julian Bell Teju Cole Rachel Cusk Marlene Dumas and Glenn Ligon open up new
perspectives on the artist's impressive oeuvre. Vija Celmins (*1938 Riga) emigrated to the
United States with her family in the late 1940s. She studied fine arts at the John Herron
School of Art in Indiana and attended a summer course at Yale University in 1961 before earning
a master's degree at UCLA. She has had solo exhibitions in numerous museums including the
Centre Pompidou in Paris the Menil Collection in Houston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York. In 1996 she was introduced to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1997 she
received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and in 2023 the Praemium Imperiale.
