Barbara Kruger

Born 1945 ( 75 years old

American conceptual artist and collagist. She is known for her BW photos with red and white letters. Addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality

She went to Syracuse but left due to her dads death and then went to Parson’s School of Design

During the 10 years after she did some freelance work editing photos and designing book jackets.

In the 60’s she began attending poetry reading and writing.

She worked at  Condé Nast Publications and after a while she got the head designer job. she also worked at  Mademoiselle and later moved on to work part-time as a picture editor at House and Garden, Aperture, and other publications. She also wrote film, television, and music columns for Artforum and Real Life Magazine.

Her early work was large wall hangings made out of different materials such as yarn, beads, sequins, feathers and ribbons also crocheted, sewed and painted bright-hued and erotically suggestive objects. This work was at the 1973 Whitney Biennial.

1976 she took a break from making what had become more abstract works, feeling that her work had become meaningless and mindless.

She taught at the University of California and became inspired by the writings. 1977 she returned to artmaking, working with her own architectural photographs

Kruger has often been grouped with such feminist postmodern artists.

She works with found photographs and mixes in text to challenge the viewer