Background

Ethnicity: Elaine Reichek’s parents were the first-generation Jewish.

Elaine Reichek was born in 1943, in New York City, New York, United States. She is a daughter of Jack Reichek who worked in the furniture business, and Hilda Reichek.

Education

Elaine Reichek obtained her Bachelor of Arts in painting from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York in 1963. Then, she pursued her studies at Yale University, New Haven where she was trained under an abstract painter Ad Reinhardt. Reichek graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

Career

Elaine Reichek adopted thread as the main material for her art at the turn of the 1960s. Since then, she has created a great number of works, including prints, machine and hand-made embroidery pieces, tapestry, installations, and knitted images. For most of them, text derived from the quotes of famous people and other literature passages is an essential element.

Reichek’s artworks have been exhibited in the United States and abroad, including the group and solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Jewish Museum in New York City, as well as in the art galleries in Belgium, Ireland, Israel, and Sao Paolo Biennale in Brazil.

Currently, the artist resides and works in New York City. One of her recent solo exhibitions is a 2019 show ‘Elaine Reichek: Sight Unseen’ at Marinaro Gallery.

Achievements

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  Elaine Reichek is considered as a person who reexamined the status of craft in the contemporary fine arts.
  
  During her career, she has received such awards as Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and Francis J. Greenburger Award. She has also been a recipient of various fellowships, including from the New York Foundation for the Arts, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, and Art Matters Foundation Grant.
  
  Artworks by Reichek are acquired by many art galleries and museums, like the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Arts and Design, the Jewish Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, all in New York City and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin among others.
  
  In 2013, Reichek’s work ‘East Africa’ was purchased for $4,063 at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas.

Works

More photos

• embroidery

  • Toutes les filles (All the girls)

  • Perhaps My Love

  • All Things

  • The Theseus Paradox

  • How Do You Know

  • Desire, Dread, Despair

  • Line Is Like the Thread

  • Midway in the Journey

  • Each of Us Is Led

  • Would You Believe It, Ariadne? (detail)

  • Ariadne’s Lament

  • Sampler (Perhaps No Life)

  • Sampler (Blade Runner)

  • Sampler (A Blurred Region)

  • Sampler (Gauguin’s Apple)

  • Sampler (Accumulated Associations)

  • Sampler (Optic White)

  • Sampler (Simplicity)

  • Sampler (Ovid’s Weavers)

  • Sampler (Moby Dick)

  • Untitled (Lenore Oremland)

  • Sampler (James Fisher)

• installation

  • A Postcolonial Kinderhood

• Tapestry

  • Paint Me a Cavernous Waste Shore

• work of art

  • Harlem Arcadia (Lunette)

  • Harlem Arcadia (Urn)

  • Hamilton Urns

  • I Wonder Why

  • Form Security Administration (I Have a Strong Feeling)

  • Easter Lilies (I.R.A. Provisionals)

  • Noble Savage/Savage Noble

  • Tears Were Shed

  • Triangles #1

  • Fan Factorial #4

  • Black & White Beds

  • The Artist’s Bedroom (detail of “Rauschenberg” bed)

Connections

Elaine Reichek married George Clark Engel Jr. in 1963.

Father:

Jack Reichek

Mother:

Hilda Reichek

husband:

George Clark Engel Jr.

mentor:

Ad Reinhardt

References

• Elaine Reichek: Native Intelligence A catalogue of an exhibition held in 1992 at Grey Art Gallery in New York City.
  1992