Vija Celmins

Vija Celmins paints, draws, and prints hypnotic monochromes and grayscale works on paper, capturing the intricate beauty of the natural world. Her subjects have included ocean waves, desert dunes, starry skies, and delicate spiderwebs, which she renders with painstaking photorealism. Celmins has used graphite, charcoal, and erasers to accurately reproduce photographs she either finds or takes herself. She has said that her process and abstract aesthetic concerns are more important than her source material. Celmins has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Paris. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Tate Britain, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum Ludwig, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Centre Pompidou, and her work has sold for seven figures on the secondary market.