Alison Saar

MFA Fine Arts - 1981


Alison Saar ('81, MFA Fine Arts) was born in Los Angeles in 1956 to celebrated African American artist Betye Saar and painter-conservator Richard Saar.

She is a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, an Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a City of Los Angeles (C.O.L.A.) Artist Fellowship. Since her artist residency at Dartmouth College, she has had key exhibitions at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, L.A. Louver and Pasadena Museum of California Art.

Saar's highly personal, often life-sized sculptures are marked by their emotional candor, and by their contrasting materials and messages, thus imbuing her figures and other artworks with important cultural subtext.

Art critic Rebecca Epstein writes,"Saar juggles themes of personal and cultural identity as she fashions various sizes of female bodies (often her own) that are buoyant with story while solid in stance. [Her works often embody a] balance of strength and tenderness, in form and idea."


Alison Saar
Alison SaarAlison Saar