Nancy Reddin Kienholz

Nancy Reddin Kienholz (December 9, 1943 – August 7, 2019) was an American mixed media artist based in Hope, Idaho. She worked in installation art, assemblage, photography, and lenticular printing.^[2] She was most famous for her collaborations with her husband and creative partner Edward Kienholz, from their meeting in 1972 until his sudden death in 1994. She continued to produce her own artworks for the rest of her life.

Early life

Reddin was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1943. Her father, Thomas Reddin (1916-2004) was born in New York City and worked in Los Angeles as a police officer; he would eventually serve as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department from 1967 to 1969 and appear on the cover of Time magazine in July 1968. Her mother, real estate broker Betty Parsons Reddin (b. 1921), was born in Denver, Colorado. Nancy was the youngest of three children, born after older brothers Thomas T. Reddin (1938 – 1985) and Michael Gray Reddin (b. 1942).^[1]: 250

Reddin was first married at age 19. She had one child from this marriage, Christine, in 1964, but the marriage ended after two years. Reddin received no formal training in art, and worked several odd jobs in Los Angeles before beginning her collaborations with Ed Kienholz in 1972.^[1]: 250

Second marriage and collaboration

Reddin met

Reddin and Kienholz began their creative collaborations the same year they met.[3] Their first work together was The Middle Islands No. 1, now in the collection of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark.^[1]: 256 Ed Kienholz continued to receive sole credit for these collaborations until 1981, when he publicly announced for the first time that all works after 1972 should be retroactively credited instead to "Kienholz", in collective reference to both Ed and Nancy.^[1]: 256

In 1973, Kienholz received a grant from

During their marriage, Reddin and Kienholz worked prolifically, primarily in installation art. They maintained studios in Berlin and in Hope, Idaho. Kienholz received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976, and their work was especially critically acclaimed in Europe.

After struggling with

In addition to continuing her work in assemblage sculpture, Reddin returned to an early interest in photography and created several works using lenticular images.^[2]

Reddin died on August 7, 2019, in Houston, aged 75.^[5]

References

Further reading

• Kienholz, Nancy Reddin; Livingstone, Marco (2001). Kienholz: tableau drawings. Los Angeles: L.A. Louver.
  ISBN 0-9708187-0-X
  .
• Kienholz, Edward; Kienholz, Nancy Reddin; Hopps, Walter [curator]; Brooks, Rosetta (1996). Kienholz: a retrospective (2nd print. ed.). New York: Whitney Museum of American Art.
  ISBN 978-0-87427-099-0
  .
• Pincus, Robert L. (1990). On a scale that competes with the world: the art of Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  ISBN 978-0-520-06730-1
  .
• Ed Kienholz; Nancy Reddin Kienholz; Beth Sellars (1984). Kienholz In Context. Spokane: Touchstone Center for the Arts.

• "Nancy Reddin Kienholz". Retrieved 2011-10-23. – LA Louver
• Solo and Group Exhibitions 1961-2010. LA Louver
• Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Lenticular Graphics
• Kienholz. The Signs of the Times. Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt Video: Kienholz Exhibition Frankfurt, Germany, October 22, 2011. - January 29, 2012.