Lee Lozano
Hard Handshake
30 October 2025 – 25 January 2026
Downtown Los Angeles
‘Lee Lozano. Hard Handshake’ brings together over 100 drawings by the artist, spanning the years 1959 to 1968. Lozano made these provocative drawings at a remarkably fast pace, using a variety of artistic styles. Informed by the artist’s unsparing eye and wry humor, they dissect such societal norms as gender roles and property ownership while challenging the commodification of art and, ultimately, all conventional aspects of life. Shown together, Lozano’s drawings embody her unbridled energy and social consciousness, radical for their time, and continue to provoke questions today. Although rarely exhibited during her lifetime, this body of work is instrumental to understanding the singular trajectory of Lozano's practice. In conjunction with the exhibition, Hauser & Wirth Publishers will release ‘In the Studio,’ a new book focused on Lozano’s life and work, written by Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti.
No title
1962
Artwork: Lee Lozano, No title, 1962 © The Estate of Lee Lozano. Photo: Barbora Gerny
About the Artist
Lee Lozano
Lee Lozano’s paintings are admired for their energy, daring physicality and tirelessness in investigating the body and issues of gender. Although lauded by Lucy Lippard in 1995 as the foremost female conceptual artist of her time, Lozano had disengaged herself from the New York art world completely by the early 1970s. She left behind a body of work of striking formal breadth and complexity. Lozano fought to consolidate her artistic self in a realm void of systems, rules, and group consciousness. She pursued a wholly independent solo studio practice, which culminated in her rejection of the New York art world and a boycott of women. She first refused to attend public art world functions and withdrew from exhibitions, finally relocating to Dallas, Texas. ‘By refusing to speak to women,’ says Helen Molesworth, Chief Curator of LA MOCA, ‘she exposed the systematic and ruthless division of the world into categories of men and women. By refusing to speak to women as an artwork, she also refused the demand of capitalism for the constant production of private property… The strategy of rejection is a powerful one.’
Current Exhibitions
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