Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States
University of California in Los Angeles
9045 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90045, United States
Otis College of Art and Design
Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States
University of California in Los Angeles
9045 Lincoln Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90045, United States
Otis College of Art and Design
Lita Albuquerque was born on January 3, 1946, in Santa Monica, California, United States. She is a daughter of Mauriceo Yaeche Albuquerque and Ferida Hayat.
Lita spent her childhood in the Republic of Tunisia, North Africa and Paris, France. When she was an eleven-year-old girl, the family came back to the United States.
Lita Albuquerque received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1968 from the University of California in Los Angeles. Two years later, she entered the Otis College of Art and Design where she had studied till 1972.
Lita Albuquerque started her professional career at the beginning of 1970 when she joined the Light and Space movement. By the end of the decade, Albuquerque received national popularity due to her pigment installations created on the natural environment.
At the beginning of the 1980s, Albuquerque came into the international art scene with her installation, the Washington Monument Project. The sculptural composition provided the artist with many awards and commissions one of which called Sol Star was demonstrated at the International Cairo Biennale.
Besides her activity as an artist, Lita Albuquerque transmitted her knowledge to the young artists in various art institutions and workshops. In 1979, the artist became a graduate advisor at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and had occupied the post till 1990. During 1984, she had been given art lessons at the Otis College of Art and Design, Parsons School of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Arizona State University. She continued a year later at the Otis College of Art and Design and Parsons School of Design and spent there one year.
Since the early installations of the 1980s, Albuquerque worked on a huge number of site projects in such areas as South Dakota Badlands, Death Valley and the Mojave Desert. The public commissions she had received the past two decades include those from the Gannett Publishers, McLean in Virginia; the Evo De Concini Federal Courthouse in Tucson, Arizona, Palos Verdes Central Library and Cerritos Public Library in California, Tochigi Prefecture Health Center in Japan; Saitama Guest Center in Tokyo and the Library at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies among others.
The biggest public art commission made by the California State government became ‘Golden State’ installation on which she collaborated with an architect Mitchell De Jarnett. It was placed in the Capitol Area East End Complex in Sacramento. The artist also worked with such architects as Robert Kramer and Cesar Pelli.
In 2006, Albuquerque along with the team of other artists and scientists realized an installation project ‘Stellar Axis: Antarctica’ in Antarctica.
During her career, Lita Albuquerque had a great number of solo shows and group exhibitions around the United States and abroad, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., San Francisco Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi, India, the Musée d'Art Moderne (Museum of Modern Art) in Paris and others.
One of the recent shows where Albuquerque demonstrated her pieces of art took place at the Desert X exhibition at the Coachella Valley in 2017.
In Los Angeles, Albuquerque’s art is represented by Michael Kohn.
Lita Albuquerque is an accomplished artist whose land installations are widely known in the United States and abroad.
During her long and fruitful artistic journey, Albuquerque received a great number of prestigious awards and fellowships, including the National Endowment Arts fellowship, National Education Association Art Fellowship, National Science Foundation Art Grant, Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, the City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship, Cairo Biennale Prize, Distinguished Women in the Arts Award and others.
In 2004, the year of the 25th anniversary of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles Lita Albuquerque was marked by the institution for her contributions to the museum.
Lita Albuquerque’s artworks can be founded in such well-known museums and art galleries, like the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Laguna Art Museum, the Palm Springs Desert Museum and many others.
Quotations: "I was interested in that impossibility of vision being able to perceive only what is around us, yet aware that […] what we are perceiving is only part of a much larger vision."
Lita Albuquerque married the actor Carey Paul Peck on January 1990. The family produced one child named Christopher.
The artist has two daughters from a previous marriage whose names are Isabelle and Jasmine.
