Alison Saar’s artistic practice embodies material and spiritual reclamation, invoking the past to reconsider the present and future. Best known for her sculpture and printmaking, Saar masterfully transforms found materials to recontextualize histories, mythologies, and folklore, particularly within the African diaspora and Indigenous cultures. Her figurative work serves as a bridge between the historic and contemporary, the personal and universal. Saar’s art delves into race and identity, womanhood and motherhood, as well as spirituality and the body.

Saar received her B.A. in studio art and art history in 1978 from Scripps College, Claremont, California. She went on to earn her MFA from Otis-Parsons Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design). At the beginning of her career, Saar was selected as a fellow of the studio program at The Studio Museum in Harlem (1982-3). She has received three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1984, 1985 and 1988), and was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1989, the Flintridge Foundation Award for Visual Artists in 2000, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in 1998 and the Joan Mitchell Artist in Residence in 2013. In 2012, the United States Artists Program named Saar one of 50 USA fellows.

Last year Alison Saar was selected by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the City of Paris to produce a sculpture to be placed in the French capital honoring the legacy of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024. Other recent commissions include sculptures made for the Equal Justice Initiative’s Freedom Monument Sculpture Park (Montgomery, AL), the Joslyn Museum of Art (Omaha, NE), and Destination Crenshaw (Los Angeles, CA). In addition to these commissions, Saar was included in exhibitions at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Bonnefanten Maastricht, Toledo Museum of Art, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, among many others in 2024 alone. Her work can be found in prestigious private and public collections worldwide including that of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (Los Angeles, CA), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, Australia), Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY), the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, (Portland, OR), among many others.

“My work is rooted in exploring history, identity, and the layered stories carried through materials, giving form to experiences that are often unseen or overlooked. To be part of Venice Family Clinic Art Exhibition + Auction is incredibly meaningful, as it extends that intention beyond the artwork itself, bringing people together through art to support care, dignity, and community.” – Alison Saar