STRONG-CUEVAS

BIOGRAPHY

Strong-Cuevas's work deals with philosophical, psychological, and cosmic concepts. She began her work in sculpture in the 1960s, working under John Hovannes at the Art Students League of New York, and was exhibited early on by Alexander Iolas, the gallerist who famously gave Andy Warhol his first solo show. Strong-Cuevas later worked with sculptor Marcel “Toto” Meylan on a sculpture series, Heads I-V. Her work has since been exhibited in galleries, museums, and art fairs across the United States and Europe. It has also been the subject of three books — Strong-Cuevas: Heads, which documents her work with Meylan, Strong-Cuevas Drawings: Ideas on Paper, and Strong-Cuevas Sculpture: Premonitions in Retrospect — and several documentaries.

One of Strong-Cuevas’s large-scale stainless steel works, Thought Travels VI, X-Ray, stands more than 13 feet tall outside her studio in Long Island. Its telescope motif, referring to her belief that thought, like light, has the ability to travel through space and time, carries into countless other drawings and sculptures. Critic Donald Kuspit called her work “imaginative brainwaves of the archetypes,” a reference to the Jungian theory of archetypes as inherited ideas or thoughts that exist in the collective unconscious of all human beings.
Born in Paris, Strong-Cuevas lived and worked in New York from the 1960s until her death in 2023. She continued to create until the end, and her final year was momentous. She showed dozens of sculpture and drawings at a seminal exhibition at the Southampton Arts Center, was profiled in Park Avenue magazine, debuted a new documentary on her life and art by director Lana Jokel, and saw two back-to-back exhibitions at Grounds for Sculpture — “Night Forms: dream loop” and “Night Forms: Infinite Wave” — that featured her large-scale works illuminated in a multi-sensory light and sound experience by Klip Collective. 
A central figure in the New York City and East End art scenes, Strong-Cuevas’s peers included Max Ernst, Françoise Gilot, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Marisol, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, and Alfonso Ossorio, with whom she collaborated on works. Besides the Southampton Arts Center and Grounds for Sculpture, her work has been exhibited at the Biennale de Sculpture in Monte Carlo, Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza across from the United Nations, and many galleries. Her work also features in the permanent collections of the Bruce Museum, Heckscher Museum, Guild Hall Museum, Grounds for Sculpture, Kykuit, the Rockefeller Estate, and the Smithsonian-affiliated Long Island Museum. In 1994, her work appeared alongside John Chamberlain’s at an exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum, and was featured in The New York Times.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS​

2019 Leonard Tourné Gallery, New York, NY
2017 Elga Wimmer, New York, NY
2016 Leonard Tourné Gallery, New York, NY
2014 Leonard Tourné Gallery, New York, NY
2008 Modernism with Island Weiss Gallery, Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY
2008 Island Weiss Gallery, New York, NY
2007 Island Weiss Gallery, Spirals and Profiles, New York, NY
2006 Island Weiss Gallery, Thought Travels, New York, NY
2006 Vassar College, Palmer Gallery, Poughkeepsie, NY
2005-2006 Island Weiss Gallery, New York, NY
2004-2005 Island Weiss Gallery, New York
1999 Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ
1988 Kerr Gallery, New York, NY
1987 Benton Gallery, Southampton, NY
1985 Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York, NY
1985 Iolas-Jackson Gallery, New York, NY
1983 Iolas-Jackson Gallery, New York, NY
1980 Tower Gallery, Southampton, NY
1978 Lee Ault & Company, New York, NY
1977 Lee Ault & Company, New York, NY

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2024 Hamptons Fine Art Fair with Tourné Gallery, Southampton, NY
2023 Tourné Gallery, New York, NY
2023 MM Fine Art, Southampton, NY
2020 MM Fine Art, Southampton, NY
2018 Studio D, Milan, Italy
2018 Leonard Tourné Gallery, New York, NY
2016 Leonard Tourné Gallery, New York, NY
2015 ArtHamptons with Leonard Tourné Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY
2014 Leonard Tourné Gallery, New York, NY
2012 Art Wynwood, Black & White Gallery, The Art Miami Pavilion, Wynwood, Miami, FL
2009 Works on Paper with Island Weiss Gallery, Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY
2008 Art 20 with Island Weiss Gallery, Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY
2007-2008 Island Weiss Gallery, New York, NY
2006 Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, West Palm Beach, FL
2005-2006 Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, Printemps; Variations; Multiples, New York, NY
2005 UBS Bank Gallery, Guild Hall Selection, New York, NY
2003 Kouros Gallery, New York, NY
2003 Clark Fine Art, Southampton, NY
2003 The Ross School, East Hampton, NY
2002 Grounds for Sculpture, 10th Anniversary Exhibition Hamilton, NJ
2001 Clark Fine Art, Strong-Cuevas: Faces East/West and Larry Rivers: Now & Then Southampton, NY
2001 Russian American Cultural Center, Dumbo Double Deuce Brooklyn, NY
2000 Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ
2000 Bulgari, Madison Avenue Where Fashion Meets Art, New York, NY
1999 Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY
1998 Earl McGrath Gallery, New York, NY
1998 Guild Hall Museum, Seen and Scene East Hampton, NY
1997 Barnard-Biderman Fine Art, Southampton, NY
1997-1998 The Tolman Collection, Singapore
1995-1998 Shidoni, Tessuque, NM
1994-1996 onwards Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ
1994 Parrish Museum, Mirrors Southampton, NY
1994 Marisa del Re, Biennale IV, Monte Carlo (Courtesy E.B. Fine Art)
1993 Marisa del Re, Biennale III, Monte Carlo (Courtesy E.B. Fine Art)
1991 Kšln Art Fair, Portico, Köln, Germany
1990 Feingarten Galleries, The Art Show New York
1990 Benton Gallery, Three Generations Southampton, NY
1989 Kšln Art Fair, Portico, Köln, Germany
1989 Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY
1988 Vered Gallery, East Hampton, NY
1987 Vered Gallery, East Hampton, NY
1987 Benton Gallery, Southampton, NY
1986 Vered Gallery, East Hampton, NY
1986 Susan Blanchard Gallery, New York, NY
1985 Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT
1985 Kouros Gallery, Ridgefield, CT
1985 Andre Zarre Gallery, New York, NY
1984 Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT
1984 Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY
1984 Tower Gallery, New York, NY
1983 Guild Hall Museum, Selections from the Permanent Collection, East Hampton, NY
1982 Art Students' League, Women in the Making of Art History, New York, NY
1980 Guild Hall Museum, Portraits Real and Imagined, East Hampton, NY
1979 The Country Gallery, New York, NY

SELECT MUSEUM COLLECTIONS 

The Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Tarrytown, NY
Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT
Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY
Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ
Heckscher Museum, Huntington, NY

EDUCATION

The Art Students League of New York 
Vassar College

SELECT PRESS

"Strong-Cuevas: A Prolific Artist with an Extraordinary Life," Park Magazine, Summer 2022
"Strong-Cuevas and Christophe von Hohenberg: Channeling the Unseen World," L’Oeil de la Photographie, July 2020
"Rockefeller sales total $835.1 million - highest auction total in history," Christie's, December 12, 2018
"Both Ends of a Sculpture Spectrum," The New York Times, January 19, 2014
"Sculptural Dialectic," Review by Donald Kuspit, 2003
"Contemporary Sculpture in a Jungle Setting," Review by Linda Yablonsky, 2002
"Doubleness in the Sculpture of Strong-Cuevas," Review by Donald Kuspit,1999
The New York Times, Review by Vivien Raynor, July 2, 1995
"The Dichotomy of the Profile," Review by Christopher French, 1991
The New York Times, Review by Phyllis Braff, September 10, 1989
The New York Times, Review by David L. Shirey, April 19, 1985
"Ancient Visions Through Modern Eyes," Review by Dorothy Kosinski, 1984
The New York Times, Review by Grace Glueck, April 15, 1979
The New York Times, Review by John Russell, June 3, 1977