Barbara Kasten


Barbara Kasten is an American artist from Chicago Illinois. Her work involves the use of abstract video and photograph projections.

Schooling and career

Kasten trained as a painter and textile artist at the University of Arizona, the California College of Arts & Crafts with Trude Guermonprez, and a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship at the University of Fine Arts in Poznań with Magdalena Abakanowicz. She was influenced by the Bauhaus movement and László Moholy-Nagy. After school, she turned to photography to encompass her interdisciplinary work, beginning in 1973 with the commercial process of diazotype and subjects reminiscent of performance art. Working for over 40 years, she is often inspired by the act of depicting a three-dimensional space onto a two-dimensional plane. She often uses mirrors, lights, and props for conceptually-based pieces. As she continues her practice, her work has continued to pure abstraction.
Kasten completed her Master in Fine Arts Degree in sculpture textile design from California College of Arts and Crafts in 1970.
She has won many awards, notably the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982.
In 2015, Kasten was given the first career survey of her work, entitled "Barbara Kasten: Stages" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. It traveled to the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts where it was presented in conjunction with the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Kasten's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.

Monographs