Wright Auction

Artist Sara Dienes, known as Sari, was born Sarolta Maria Anna Chylinska in 1898 in Debreczen, Hungary. Dienes' early life was marked by significant personal and familial challenges, most notably, her parents' divorce when she was just four years old that led to a period of financial instability. Nevertheless, Dienes' youth was rich culturally, as she took piano lessons from her maternal grandmother and began pursuing dance in her teens. This was followed in the 1920s by dance training in Budapest with instructor Valéria Dienes, the wife of mathematician and poet Paul Dienes, whom Sari Dienes married soon thereafter. With Paul, Sari traveled to Vienna and later Paris, where she immersed herself in the vibrant art scene. Sari Dienes studied both math and art in Paris, befriending prominent figures such as André Kertész and Max Ernst.

Dienes' life took a significant turn in 1939 when she sailed to Canada, intending to visit New York City briefly, but finding herself stranded there due to the outbreak of World War II. This twist of fate altered the trajectory of her life and career. In New York, Dienes played a key role in establishing the Ozenfant Academy of Fine Arts and embraced a wide array of forms. She pushed the boundaries of her creative process by using unconventional techniques and mediums as she explored not only painting, but printmaking, woodblock printing, and mixed-media installations. In the 1940s, Dienes was a student of Fernand Léger and Henry Moore. She also traveled abroad to India and Nepal and journeyed all across America, which prompted her to begin using elements of natural and urban landscapes, as well as everyday objects, in her art practice.

During the early 1950s, Dienes started to produce rubbings from nature with wood, grass, flowers, petroglyphs, and other materials while simultaneously making use of the city, especially in the form of works based on manhole covers and subway grates. An icon of the American avant-garde, Dienes mentored and inspired multiple generations of artists, including Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Her neo-Dadaist vision was likewise enriched through friendships with artist Ray Johnson and composer John Cage; all three were also Zen Buddhists to varying degrees. In 1961, Dienes moved her studio into a utopian cooperative named Land in Stony Point, New York, spending most of the three decades that followed there until her death in 1992.

Watch Sari Dienes: A Life In Art (Sari Dienes Foundation 2021).