The Museum Penzberg – Campendonk Collection is dedicating this year’s summer exhibition to the Californian artist corita kent (1918-1986). She was not only a pioneering pop artist, but as a former nun of the American order Immaculate Heart of Mary, she was also a celebrated art educator and advocate of social justice.
Her prints and teachings were distributed worldwide and were politically motivated beyond their innovative aesthetics. The peace movement generation in California in the 60s and 70s thanked her for this. Avant-garde artists such as Buckminster Fuller, John Cage and Charles and Ray Eames were among its supporters. In the midst of the consumer-orientated pop art era, Corita Kent gave art a new twist and imbued it with the pursuit of freedom, faith, love and hope.
In the course of her work, Corita Kent’s art developed from the use of figurative and religious images to brightly coloured serigraphs, which, with elements from advertising graphics and slogans, supermarket logos, typography from wanted posters, popular song lyrics, Bible verses and handwritten literary quotations, took an increasingly critical stance towards the existing grievances of American society. In her art and collective actions, she called for a confrontation with poverty, hunger, racism, social suffering and the Vietnam War.
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