13 Facts About Lezley Saar

Lezley Irene Saar is an African American artist whose artwork is responsive to race, gender, female identity, and her ancestral history.

Lezley Saar has exhibited widely in the US and internationally.

Lezley Saar's work is included in museum collections such as The Kemper Museum, CAAM, The Ackland Art Museum, the Smith College Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem and MOCA.

Lezley Saar is currently represented by Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles and Various Small Fires in Asia.

Lezley Irene Saar was born into a family of artists in Los Angeles.

Lezley Saar's mother Betye Saar is an African-American assemblage artist and her father Richard Saar was a ceramist and art conservator.

Lezley Saar grew up surrounded by art; her mother's first studio was the family kitchen table.

Lezley Saar has two sisters, visual artist Alison Saar and writer Tracye Saar.

In 1972 Lezley Saar enrolled at the L'Institut Francais de Photographie in Paris, which influenced her use of portrait imagery.

Lezley Saar continued her studies in 1976 at San Francisco State University, and supported her artistic practice by working at KPFA radio in Berkeley, and creating illustrations for Bay area writers such as Ishmael Reed.

Lezley Saar exhibited at the Jan Baum Gallery in Los Angeles and the David Beitzel Gallery in New York the 1990s.

Lezley Saar's work is both inspired by and a reaction to growing up in a family of artists, To work alongside her mother, sister and now daughter is a great privilege, one that inspired her interest in feminism, African American history, and biracial identity.

Lezley Saar's 2020 exhibition "A contouring of Conjourors" was an installation of works exploring the complexity of identity.