Susan Weil

The New York–based American artist Susan Weil (*1930) is considered one of the most important figures to have significantly expanded and shaped Abstract Expressionism. Her diverse mixed-media works explore the plastic quality of time and space through processes of cutting, crumpling, and reconfiguring her compositions.
Weil began her artistic training at the Académie Julian in Paris and later studied at the renowned Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where she was taught by Josef Albers and studied alongside Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, and Robert Rauschenberg, to whom she was briefly married. In 1949, the two moved together to New York. Amid the experimental atmosphere of the New York School, marked by interdisciplinary exchange and cultural diversity, Weil became a defining voice in a circle of pioneers whose innovative techniques and material explorations had an international impact. When she introduced Rauschenberg to the blueprint technique, which she used to create life-sized cyanotypes of human figures and foliage, it had an indelible influence on his artistic practice. Unlike many of her contemporaries who dedicated themselves solely to abstraction, Weil also integrated figurative and narrative elements into her work. Her inspiration stems from nature, literature, photography, and autobiographical motifs. Over the course of her long career, she has engaged deeply with the interplay of time, space, and movement. Her works are characterized by a multilayered, often fragmented visual language, in which she breaks through surfaces, shifts visual planes, and recomposes them. She frequently incorporates everyday materials such as found objects, metal, paper, textiles, plexiglass, recycled wood, or canvas. The result is a series of vibrant, often playfully arranged compositions—bent, cut, folded, or reassembled—that invite viewers to perceive multiple perspectives simultaneously.

Susan Weil is a Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Her works belong to reputable international collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art; MoMa New York City, the Victoria and Albert Museum London; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo; National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington; the National Museum in Stockholm; and the Helsinki Art Museum; Moderna Museet, Stockholm;  Wanås Foundation, Knislinge.