The Kimpton EPIC Hotel, one of Miami’s leading boutique hotels, presents a new art exhibition celebrating Women’s History Month titled Mira Lehr: Continuum, on view now through April 20th. The nationally acclaimed, eco-feminist artist is celebrated for co-founding Continuum in 1961, one of America’s first art collectives for women artists. It thrived for more than 30 years, and her vision to kickstart the local art scene influenced the evolution of the visual arts in Miami. The Hotel created its new EPIC Art initiative to advance the works of local artists and provide its visitors an insider’s look into the destination’s vibrant art scene.
“Her Golden Hour”
“I was shocked at the lack of an art scene in Miami in 1960, especially for women artists,” says Lehr. “So we decided to take matters into our own hands and banded together our group of women artists to form Continuum as a working co-op to showcase women artists when no one else would, and it thrived for more than 30 years… We learned on our own how to create opportunities for ourselves, to display our work via DIY exhibitions throughout the 1960s, the 1970s and 1980s, an era in the art world that would be difficult for today’s young artists to imagine.”
Critics praise Mira Lehr as the real-life Mrs. Maisel of the male-dominated art scenes in 1950s New York and 1960s Miami. Now, at the bold age of 87, Lehr is creating more new work than ever before in her six decades of artmaking. In honor of Women’s History Month, one of the new paintings in this exhibition is titled Julia’s Prophecy (for Julia Tuttle). Known as “the mother of Miami,” Tuttle was pivotal in pioneering the City of Miami in the 1890s. The Hotel is located near the very spot where Julia Tuttle first settled.
“Mira Lehr blazed trails as a woman artist in the 1950s during the male-dominated art scenes in New York and Miami’s mid-century era,” says Ericka Nelson, general manager of Kimpton EPIC Hotel and director of operations for Kimpton’s Florida hotels. “Today, Lehr is recognized as one of the early influencers who helped Miami become an epicenter of creativity and diversity, and her art continues to inspire new generations throughout her six decades of propelling the art movement forward.”
“Reproductive Genesis”
The term Continuum is equated with being limitless and with the idea of boundlessness, and this current time has been a powerful period of creativity for Lehr. New techniques and discoveries have paved the way for new visions and experiments in her art, and this exhibition thrives on that sense of newness for Mira Lehr.
“I no longer feel as though I have those Masters of art history sitting on my shoulders, watching what I am doing,” says Lehr. “I am more of an explorer now. I can now create in a more powerful way. I find that this realization often comes late in life, after a long career and I believe my sixty years of work has made me, in Hans Hofmann’s words, ‘search for the real’ in a more profound way.”
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