An expansive exploration of Frey's wide-ranging artistic practice, from vivid, pictorial pastels to her beloved larger-than-life sculptures

In the late 1980s, American artist Viola Frey (1933–2004) began a series of drawings she titled Artist’s Mind/Studio/World. Although she is best known for her large-scale figurative sculptures in clay, it is these pastels on paper that inspired this first monograph on Frey’s extraordinary work. Spanning more than 50 years, Frey’s art making crisscrossed myriad subjects, mediums and forms. Taken together, the Artist’s Mind/Studio/World drawings speak to this breadth, clarifying her devotion to line, color and scale, and demonstrating the ways she seamlessly transitioned from three dimensions to two, and from the intimate to the monumental.
Extensively illustrated with recent discoveries from the Viola Frey Archives—including newspaper clippings, correspondence, slides and photographs—and containing major new critical texts alongside an illustrated chronology, Artist’s Mind/Studio/World explores the life and work of a vanguard multidisciplinary artist whose influence resonates with contemporary artists and audiences.

Text by: Cynthia de Bos, Jenelle Porter, Jodi Throckmorton, Nancy Lim