Discipline: Literature

Roberta Allen

Discipline: Literature
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1971, 1972, 1973
Roberta Allen is a New York-based artist who was born and raised in New York. At age 20, she traveled alone to Europe and lived briefly in Athens, Amsterdam, and Berlin before moving for a time to Mexico. Over the years, she traveled, often alone, to the Peruvian Amazon, Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, Mali, and countries in Central America. She had her first solo gallery exhibition in Amsterdam in 1967. After several shows in New York, she joined John Weber Gallery in 1973 and had solo shows there in 1974, 75, 77, 79. She also exhibited in solo shows in Milan, Dusseldorf, Brussels, Munich, and Rome. Her works have been exhibited at MoMA P.S. 1, the Kunstforum Stadtische Galerie in Munich, and The Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in Perth, Western Australia. Her conceptual works, which combine image and text, include drawings, collages, artist books, photo/text series, and installations. She has been in more than 100 group exhibitions worldwide. In 2014, the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla, CA, began a catalogue raisonné of her multiple edition 1970s artist books. A solo show of recent conceptual drawings and one-of-a-kind artist books took place at the Athenaeum in 2016, and a solo show of recent work took place at Minus Space in 2017.