SFMOMA adds three works by Sonya Rapoport to collection

Sonya Rapoport, No. 20 II, 1973. Acrylic and airbrush acrylic on canvas, 85” x 139”.

The Sonya Rapoport Legacy Trust is pleased to announce that the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has added to their permanent collection two beautiful, large acrylic paintings – No. 20 II (1973, pictured above), and Evolvement, (1974) – as well as the drawing Survey Chart No. 20 (1971, pictured below).

Sonya Rapoport, Survey Chart Drawing No. 20, 1971. Gouache and graphite on found survey chart on paper, 20” x 24”.

These works all feature Rapoport’s “Nu-Shu” stencil language of feminine symbols, which she used in all of her work from this period – beginning with her chance discovery in 1971 of a collection of antique survey charts squirreled away in a second-hand desk, and culminating in 1976 in the the last paintings of her career.

Nushu is a script used exclusively by women in Hunan, China – a fitting inspiration for the first of many sets of enigmatic symbols that Rapoport would explore in drawings, computer art, and interactive installations throughout her later career.

Sonya Rapoport with the unfinished painting No. 20 II in 1973. Acquired by SFMOMA.
Categories: Acquisition