TATE COLLECTION


TATE COLLECTION

Acquisitions

ARTIST ROOMS: The d'Offay Donation

Vija Celmins (born 1938)

One room comprising 24 works on paper, including three unique drawings: Untitled (Desert-Galaxy), 1974; Night Sky #19, 1998; and Web #1, 1999.

American artist Vija Celmins makes paintings, drawings and prints. Using charcoal, graphite and erasers she produces delicate monochromatic images based on photographs of the sea, deserts, the night sky and other natural phenomena. Through her slow rigorous approach, the meticulous precision of her technique, and serial exploration of her subjects, Celmins seems to question the nature of representation. The seminal drawing Web #1 is typical of her apparently fragile, ephemeral images and is the first of nine works on the theme of the spider’s web made between 1998 and 2006. It is accompanied by a series of four ‘web’ prints from 2001 and 2002. These web images echo the web-like construction of the universe, a further preoccupation of the artist. Among other works in the Donation are a series from the 1980s entitled Concentric Bearings and two negative images of night skies in which the sky appears white and star formations are transformed into black markings. All these works focus on something small and individual in the context of vastness. The images they depict seem fragile because they record a specific human glimpse through a telescope or camera which is ephemeral and frozen in time.

Web #1 Web #1 1999
Charcoal on paper
565 x 648 mm
Photo courtesy Anthony d'Offay Ltd
© Vija Celmins

Artists

National Heritage Memorial Fund       The Art Fund       Department for Culture, Media and Sport      The Scottish Government

 

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