Two new exhibits at the Katonah Museum of Art

Leonora Carrington, “Sueño (Nephesh as the Soul in a State of Sleep),” 1959. Oil on linen. Private collection. ©Leonora Carrington / Arts Rights Society, New York. (Contributed photo)

The Katonah Museum of Art has two new exhibitions, both on view until Oct. 5.

Featured in the KMA’s Beitzel Gallery will be “Leonora Carrington: Dream Weaver,” an exhibition featuring the art of Leonora Carrington (1917–2011). 

“A pioneering Surrealist, Carrington’s vivid, dreamlike paintings are filled with mythical creatures, esoteric symbols, and feminist themes,” the museum said in an announcement. “Celebrated for her fiercely imaginative world-building, Carrington drew from folklore, alchemy, and personal mythology to create richly layered works that defy conventional narrative. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to experience the visionary scope of her art, which continues to captivate audiences and influence contemporary artists around the world.”

Claudia Wieser (German, b. 1973). “Untitled, 2013.” Gold leaf on paper. The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation. ©Claudia Wieser (Contributed photo)

Featured in the KMA’s Righter Gallery will be “Sublime Geometries: Selections from The William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation,” featuring work by a multigenerational group of women artists who are reinventing geometric abstraction as a vital language for contemporary art.

“Through their respective practices, they engage geometry, material, and abstraction to explore perception, structure, and space,” the announcement said. “Alison Hall (American, b. 1980) reinterprets Renaissance narratives through intricately layered surfaces stitched with fine graphite lines, evoking a quiet tension between shadow and light. Hester Simpson (American, b. 1949) uses the square canvas to explore color and geometry, with luminous grids and pulsating hues that hover between order and energy. Dannielle Tegeder (American, b. 1971) draws on a fascination with urban infrastructure to build imagined networks of lines, shapes, and planes — dynamic systems of architectural abstraction.”

“Claudia Wieser (German, b. 1973) merges drawing, sculpture, and installation, incorporating industrial materials, hand-drawn patterns, and delicate gold leaf into meticulously balanced geometric compositions. Alison Wilding (British, b. 1948) constructs enigmatic sculptural forms from elemental shapes that suggest both celestial orbits and organic vessels, blurring the boundary between the cosmic and the corporeal,” KMA said. “Together, these artists create a compelling dialogue on the poetics of form and the resonance of abstraction.

“The pairing of these two exhibitions offers a powerful meditation on the myriad ways women have shaped modern and contemporary art — through the boundless imagination of Leonora Carrington’s Surrealist compositions, eloquently complimented by the disciplined beauty of geometric abstraction in the hands of women artists across generations and geographic boundaries,” KMA’s Director and Chief Curator Michelle Yun Mapplethorpe said. “Together, they reveal how the interplay between intuition and structure can meaningfully inform our understanding through visual language.”