Len Lye

Name
Len Lye
Date of birth
05 Jul 1901
Place of birth
Christchurch/Canterbury (region)/New Zealand
Date of death
15 May 1980
Place of death
New York/United States of America
Gender
Male
Biography
Lye was born in Christchurch in 1901. After finishing school, he attended Wellington Technical College, taking commercial subjects until 1918, when he switched to fine art. In 1922, he moved to Sydney, working briefly as an animator and experimenting with kinetic sculpture. By November 1926, he had settled in London, producing abstract paintings, batiks and sculpture. In 1928, he was elected to the Seven and Five Society. The following year, he began making films that combined Māori, Aboriginal, Samoan, and European modernist influences. Unable to afford a camera, he experimented with painting directly onto film.

In 1944, Lye visited New York, where he fell in love with the city’s arts culture and decided to settle there permanently. Moving in the circles of the Abstract Expressionists, he produced experimental films, paintings, and kinetic sculptures that earned him an international reputation. After much urging, Lye visited New Zealand in 1968 and again in 1977. He died in 1980 in Warwick, New York, bequeathing all his major works to the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, which now houses the Len Lye Centre.