Liliane Lijn (b1939)

Liliane Lijn is a ‘New Yorker by birth, a European by education, and a Londoner by choice.’ She is a leading pioneer and exponent of kinetic art and continues to experiment with light, movement, words, film, liquids and industrial materials.

She studied in Paris in the late 1950’s at the Sorbonne and the Ecole du Louvre. Her early works were influenced by the artistic circles she moved in, particularly demostrating surrealist and existentialist influences.

Moving back to New York in 1961,  she was excited by space exploration and new technologies. She became the resident artist in a plastics factory where she was able to experiment with industrial plastics, fire and acids. She began using light, movement and liquids in her work and continued these creative investigations when she returned to Europe in 1963.

Since her arrival in London in 1966, her work has featured in numerous international exhibitions and is represented in public collections in Europe and the USA. Her work is represented in many public and corporate collections in Britain, including Tate; the British Museum; and the Arts Council of Great Britain. International collections holding her work include the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Kunstmuseum, Berne; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia.

Lijn’s work featured in the Tate exhibitions A Summer of Love (2005) and This Was Tomorrow: Art and the ’60s (2004).