June Wayne (March 7, 1918 - August 23, 2011) was born in Chicago to Dorothy Kline, who had come to United States in 1907, fleeing antisemitism and pogroms in her native Minsk, Belarus. Passionate about the arts, Wayne dropped out of high school at age 15, had her first painting exhibit at 17. A year later she traveled to Mexico City where she had been invited to exhibit at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Shortly thereafter, she found employment as a painter for the WPA.

By the 1940’s Wayne had moved to California, and studied production illustration at Caltech, making drawings from aircraft blueprints for the war effort. By night she was painting, and becoming an integral part of the California art scene.

In 1948 Wayne met Lynton Kisler who ran a small lithography studio. At the time lithography and printmaking in the US was generally regarded as more suitable for throwaway posters than for fine art. Wayne, however, saw larger possibilities for the medium, and traveled to Paris to collaborate with French master printer Marcel Durassier, who was the printmaker for artists including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Salvador Dali, Marc Chagall, this on a suite of her works inspired by the English poet John Donne.

Wayne’s stay in Europe persuaded her as to the immense possibilities of lithography, a medium which would allow fine artists to create multiples, expanding both the artistic palette and the affordability of their work.

By 1959, Wayne had convinced the New York based Ford Foundation to underwrite residencies at her Hollywood studio for artists to collaborate with and learn from master lithographers of Europe, and later the United States. Tamarind Lithography Workshop, named after the street where Wayne’s studio was located, brought more than 150 artists into this unique environment over the next 10 years. Artists including Josef and Anni Albers, Ruth Asawa, Bruce Conner, Richard Diebenkorn, Burhan Doğançay, John Dowell, Claire Falkenstein, Sam Francis, Françoise Gilot, Philip Guston, Richard Hunt, Louise Nevelson, Ed Ruscha, Rufino Tamayo, Charles White, and others created seminal work. Through her will, charisma, and intellect, Wayne “was instrumental not only in transforming lithographic practices in the United States, but in helping to renew enthusiasm for it among artists, printers, and institutions elsewhere.” (Pat Gilmour)

Wayne, who never allowed herself to be categorized as to the style of her work, gender, or heritage, nonetheless was acutely aware of the barriers which women faced in securing representation in the museum, gallery, and media world. In addition to her prodigious output as an artist, and revolutionary force, she was a fiery advocate for women, breaking down doors of opportunity for all. While at Tamarind, she included underrepresented women and African Americans in the roster, rare at the time.

The 1000th lithograph which had been produced at Tamarind in 1965 was held back in her honor for her creation. “At Last a Thousand” marked her growing interest in the relationship between art and science, the four states of the print showing an atomic explosion in interstellar space.

“My work method is the scientific method” June Wayne asserted. “Being an artist is a lot like being a detective. The task of the artist is always to notice, digest, and comment on what is going on. We do it whether we’re aware of it or not. My model has always been Sherlock Holmes. I am always interested in the dog that didn’t bark in the night. What does a negative shape mean? I want to explore the thing you don’t know about.”

In her paintings, prints, and tapestries she explored genetics, optics and perception, tidal waves, earthquakes, quantum physics, environmental change, artificial intelligence, the rapid expansion of tools of state surveillance, and looking skyward the origins and forces of the outer cosmos.

Wayne’s scientific explorations were informed both by her own research and conversation with leading scientists including Harrison Brown, Richard Feynman, and Dr. Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, as well as leading physicists at the Jet Propulsion Lab and Caltech University.

By 1970, Wayne, always ready for new challenges, arranged for the Tamarind workshop to be transferred to the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque as the Tamarind Institute, where it continues creative operations until this day. Wayne, free of the administrative responsibilities of Tamarind, the decade of direction which had limited her artistic output, was now able to turn her energies back to her own artwork.

Returning to Paris after Tamarind, Wayne renewed her friendship with Madeleine Jarry (1917-1982) the formidable Inspecteur principale du Mobilier national des Gobelins et de Beauvais, an institution with roots in French art tradition dating to the 15th century, supported by Colbert and Louis XIV during their time.

When Jarry suggested that Wayne experiment with the tapestry medium, Wayne recognized its sensuous and tactile nature, and was moved by the possibilities of its large scale. Several of Wayne’s lithographs formed the basis of the twelve tapestries which Wayne created in collaboration with the master weavers of France between 1970 and 1974.

In 1984, Wayne returned to painting, the medium with which she had begun her career in Chicago, and Mexico City as a young artist. “In the Cognitos Series (later referred to as the Djuna Set), she painted on canvases prepared years earlier by Douglass Howell the accomplished papermaker, who built thick, highly textured surfaces from mixtures of gesso, gelatin, and paper; half of them painted over previously existing paintings.” (Robert P. Conway, p. 331, “A Catalogue Raisonné 1936-2006, June Wayne - The Art of Everything”, Rutgers University Press, 2007.) In a general way they alluded to planetary atmospheres and topographies, and were often monochromatic. As to her frequent use of the color black, Wayne explained, “To me black is the most noble color. Black allows anything to happen, and imaginatively. It doesn't partake of those earthly cliches about what color means: red is blood, blue is sky, green is earth. Such assumptions skew how we look at art.” (June Wayne, The Djuna Set, Fresno Museum, 1988, Exhibition Catalogue, Conversation with Robert Barrett, Director, page 8.)

Wayne further innovated in the painting medium with her "Quake Series" created between 1992-95, exploring the seismic events so much a part of Southern California life. Wayne devised her own "highly textured surfaces from styrene modules used for packing shipping crates, the ubiquitous styrofoam “peanut". Easily cut, shaped, glued, and painted, these modules allowed her to compose fields combining uniformity and variety. They also continued her tradition of using the most commonplace objects to achieve uncommon aesthetic effects.” Similar materials were used by Wayne in later canvases, including in “Propellar”, the monumental canvas she was working on until her death in 2011.(Robert P. Conway, p. 338, “A Catalogue Raisonné 1936-2006, June Wayne - The Art of Everything”, Rutgers University Press, 2007.)

At age 92, in 2010, Wayne attended her last major public exhibit, titled “June Wayne’s Narrative Tapestries: DNA, Tidal Waves, and the Cosmos” held at the Art Institute of Chicago, and curated by Christa C. Mayer Thurman. “June Wayne’s tapestries, magisterial in their conception and extraordinary in their refined beauty and execution, represent her decades of research into the intersection of art and science” wrote James Cuno, then President and Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, in his foreword to the exhibit catalogue.

As then LA Times art critic William Wilson wrote in 1998, “Wayne’s uniqueness lies in her departures. She offers a fruitful alternative model for the artist. Never allowing a signature style to imprison her, like a creative scientist she investigates her ideals and passions even when they lead her out of the studio. She does more than make superior art in Los Angeles. She helped mold its larger culture.”

June Wayne’s work is well represented in major museums and collections throughout the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the British Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Tate Gallery, the Whitney Museum, and is the subject of continuing exhibitions.

Text © 2022 MB Abram
All images © 2022 June Wayne Collection