"Clement Greenberg...stopped and scratched his head, then left..."

(BENGLIS, Lynda).

Exhibition postcard: Lynda Benglis (8 February-4 March [1970]).

Black & white photographic illus. on recto, details on verso. Photographic postcard, mailed. New York: Paula Cooper Gallery, [1970].

An extremely rare piece of art ephemera, the postcard invitation for Lynda Benglis’s first-ever solo gallery show, held at Paula Cooper where the artist was working part-time. One of Benglis’s sculptures is pictured on the recto. She had an earlier one-person show at the University of Rhode Island's Main Gallery in 1969, but this was her solo debut with an art dealer.

Benglis shared this amusing anecdote about the exhibition with Artforum in 2018: “One day in 1970, Clement Greenberg came to my first solo show and walked around my sculpture made in situ (looking dumbfounded). I happened to be sitting behind Paula’s desk watching him. He stopped and scratched his head, then left in the elevator opposite me. I was so delighted that it confounded him because it was doing everything that I had heard he was suggesting to other painters that they do, such as turn their work upside down or present it on the floor.”

In fine condition; trivial wear from mailing. Mailed to poet Larry Fagin (1937-2017).

❧ Artforum interview with Benglis published 8 June 2018 (accessed 19 October 2022).

See Paula Cooper Gallery’s website for a photograph of the 1970 exhibition.

Price: $300.00

Item ID: 8560