Creator Record
Metadata
Name |
Autio, Lela |
Nationality or Tribal Affiliation |
American |
Dates & places of birth and death |
Born April 12, 1927, Great Falls, MT Died January 23, 2016, Missoula, MT |
Education |
1945 - 1949: B.A., Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 1961: M.A. in Art, University of Montana, Missoula, MT |
Places of residence |
1957 - 2016: Missoula, Montana 1952 - 1957: Helena, Montana 1950 - 1952: Pullman, WA |
Notes |
Lela Autio was a Montana modernist painter and artist who was born and raised in Great Falls, Montana. She earned a BA from Montana State University and a MA in art from the University of Montana, Missoula. Starting as a painter, Autio notedly created work influenced by Abstract Expressionism and late Impressionism. She eventually moved to other artistic mediums, creating abstract soft sculpture well before other artists worked with or gained recognition in the medium. As a high school student, she worked on theater costumes, and throughout her life, she created wall hanging and sculptures assemblages from fabric, plexiglass, Mylar and plastic. In the mid-1950’s, Lela co-founded the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena along with Peter Voulkos and her husband, Rudy Autio, and during her five years in residence, taught art classes and produced pottery. She received many awards throughout her career, including the 2011 MAM Award, and exhibited throughout Montana and the west. Lela lived in Missoula for over 50 years. She taught art at Hellgate High School and was instrumental in the founding of the Missoula Museum of the Arts (now Missoula Art Museum) in 1975. Autio exhibited in a faculty exchange with the University of Montana and the People's Republic of China in Hangzhou in 1983. Notable exhibitions in her lifetime include: Montana Current Ideas, Yellowstone Art Center Billings, Montana; Judy Chicago/Lela Autio, Paris Gibson Square, Great Falls, Montana; The Manipulated Thread, Missoula Art Museum, Missoula, Montana; and the Missoula Artists' Exchange Exhibition in Oaxaca, Mexico in 1989. Her work was also the subject of a career survey in 2000 which was shown at the Missoula Art Museum and the Holter Museum of Art in Helena. In 2012, three Plexiglass pieces by Autio were selected for a statewide survey of contemporary art known as the Montana Triennial. For more information, see www.lelaautio.com/ |
