Artwork Page for Shiva (verso)

Details / Information for Shiva (verso)

Shiva (verso)

1980

Lenore Tawney

(American, 1907–2007)
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Culture
America
Medium
pen and black and green ink and pencil and collage
Support
Postcard
Measurements
Image: 11.5 x 16 cm (4 1/2 x 6 5/16 in.); Sheet: 11.5 x 16 cm (4 1/2 x 6 5/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Katharine Kuh 1981.172.b
Copyright
© Lenore G. Tawney Foundation
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print
?

Did You Know?

Lenore Tawney was a pioneering fiber artist known for large-scale public installations, but her postcard collages were personal missives to close friends on an intimate scale.

Description

This is one of 44 postcard collages in the CMA’s collection that the textile artist Lenore Tawney sent through the mail to her friend, the art dealer, curator, and critic Katherine Kuh between 1969 and 1981. Using natural objects and ephemera that she compiled over a lifetime, Tawney’s collages display the artist’s personal visual vocabulary and poetic response to materials. Recurring images—such as eggs, feathers, birds, baby animals, crosses, and circles—engage with universal themes such as vulnerability, resilience, infinity, and spirituality. The cross within a circle is Tawney's representation of the meeting of eternal and linear time.
A dark bronze sculpture depicts Shiva dancing within a circular ring of flames. Balanced on his right leg atop a small prostrate figure, his left leg is raised and bent. He has four arms, and strands of hair fan out horizontally. He wears an ornate, tiered crown and thin, snaking sashes. The surface has a dark patina. The name "Tawney" is written in cursive script at the bottom left.

Shiva (verso)

1980

Lenore Tawney

(American, 1907–2007)
America

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