Jeanne Reynal was born in 1903 in Whiteplains, New York. Reynal pioneered a new type of mosaic that took on a more contemporary and abstract approach.
Her formal art training came from Boris Anrep, a Russian mosaicist who was working in Paris. This laid the groundwork for her interest in working with mosaics. When Reynal’s father died in 1939, it gave her the resources to start building an art collection. She began touring the country and gained great recognition as a mosaicist.
At the time, the standard for mosaics was a Byzantine approach that was very ordered and flat. Reynal flipped that on its head and added great texture and depth to her work. She was a master of using glass in her work. Although the work to cut individual pieces of glass for her work took a great deal of time, the effect was it gave a much greater surface to reflect and refract light.
She died in 1983 but is still recognized as an important figure in the New York Abstraction Expressionist Movement.
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