Artist Vera Klement Has Died: 1929–2023

“...I was born in a small town that was known for its beauty and moderate climate, a renowned resort on the Baltic Sea. It was part of the Free City of Danzig, an independent German Hanseatic city/state, that is now Gdansk, Poland... 

...From the beginning I experienced a sense of duality the bright light and rhythmic pounding of the sea, and there, rising behind it, the dark forest that held in its silence the northern European legends of evil spirits: witches, erlkings and poison toadstools. Light and dark - good and evil - life and death - that juxtaposition that eventually became the underpinning of my painting...” 

  from BLUNT EDGE - The Making of a Painter : Vera Klement

From CGN Staff

Today we received the following message from Zolla/Lieberman Gallery that artist Vera Klement has died. 

"We are saddened to announce the passing of spirited artist Vera Klement (1929-2023). 

In a career spanning over six decades, Klement's work was a reflection of her many influences. From classical music to literature to modern art, these themes are filtered through her early formative experience fleeing the Nazis with her family just before World War II and a lifetime examining that loss of home and identity. 

Born in 1929 in the Free City of Danzig, now Gdańsk in Poland, Klement’s childhood was imbued with music and literature primarily from her mother, a pianist. The family fled Europe following "Kristallnacht" (the Night of Broken Glass) in 1938 and settled in New York, where she studied art and was exposed to Cubism and Abstract Expressionism. In 1964 she moved to Chicago where she became active in the feminist movement, taught for 25 years at the University of Chicago, and developed her work into the powerful metaphoric and poetic images for which she became known.

Vera was a friend and mentor to many in the Chicago arts community and she will be dearly missed."

Read CGN's 2014 interview with Klement here