Bettina Grossman, Bettina

(Paris: Atelier EXB, 2022)

I copy-edited and proofread this catalogue devoted to Bettina Grossman’s work.

Publisher’s description: A mythical artist from New York in the 60s and 70s, who lived as a recluse in the Chelsea Hotel from 1972 on, Bettina Grossman (1928- 2021)—Bettina to the art world—developed a prolific body of work over more than sixty years. This monographic book is the first to present her exceptional work on photography, cinematogra­phy and graphic design, fed by her practice of conceptual sculpture. This book won the 6th edition of the LUMA Rencontres Dummy Book Award Arles in 2020.

An eccentric personality, totally dedicated to her art, Bettina lived in the Chelsea Hotel from 1972 following the fire in her studio in which she lost all of her archives. Living like a recluse in this community of artists, Bettina produced and accumulated in her tiny studio a considerable body of work that is fully in line with the great history of the artistic avant-gardes of the 20th century. Her pieces are suspended in the studio, hung on the walls, placed on the floor: they invade the space in a continuum leading to vertigo, the artistic gesture becoming a physical and visual experience. On the border of abstraction, Bettina manipulates, twists, spreads, stretches matter, light and shadow. Her serial practice reveals a hypnotic universe of great visual power.

In 2019, the Franco-Moroccan photographer Yto Barrada exhibited some pieces of Bettina at LMCC in New York, which allowed the rediscovery of her work. Barrada gained Bettina’s trust who opened her archives for the first time into which Yto Barrada and Gregor Huber delved for close to three years. They imagined a book with the complicity of Bettina until the latter's death on November 2, 2021, at the age of 94, bringing to light a major work produced by an iconic artist.