About
BARBARA L. BACHNER – BIOGRAPHY
Barbara L. Bachner is a student of art history and a celebrated visual artist. She maintained a studio in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City from 1995 to 2016 with her current studio being located on 57th St. in Midtown Manhattan.
Ms. Bachner was born in Waterville, Maine to Thaddeus Eugene and Bernadette Artemise LaVerdiere. She married Robert Lawrence Bachner when she was 24 years old. They have a daughter, Suzanne Jouve Bachner. In 1968 Ms. Bachner launched her art career by earning a bachelor’s degree in art history, magna cum laude, from New York University, at which time her field of study emphasized Italian painting in the 16th and 17th centuries. As a studio artist she went on to study at the National Academy School of Design and the Art Students League in NYC through the late ‘70’s and 80’s. Later her Master of Fine Arts Degree was earned at Johnson State College, in Johnson, VT. She began making art as a painter, expanding to printmaking, sculpture,
Leaning Tower, Archival Pigment Print 19 x 13”
installation and video. Ms. Bachner has been exhibiting since 1978 and, though she enjoyed her solo presentations, her proudest moments have been being a part of exhibits that were more globally impactful.
In addition to creating art, Ms. Bachner lectured at the Ulster County Art Association and at the Woodstock School of Art in the 90’s. She has served as a panelist with numerous artistic groups and co-curated shows at the Belmont Towbin Wing at the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum in Woodstock, NY. In 2008 she curated “Engrams” for the Arts Society of Kingston. She has served on the Boards of the National Association of Women Artists and the Pen and Brush Club in NY and the WAAM in Woodstock, NY, where she has served in many capacities. She is a life member of the Arts Students League, NYC.
Ms. Bachner began her art as realist painter of portraits and the human figure, then, as a post-modern artist, began employing more innovative materials such as transformed shoes and modeling pastes in her 3-dimensional installations as well as working in archival print media. Her pieces look for psychological depth and beauty.
Ms. Bachner has enjoyed numerous group shows, especially Chinese Ideas in American Art at the China Gallery in New York and Onishi Galleries in New York City, the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY, New Paltz, NY, the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild and the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum in Woodstock, NY, and the 1998 New York State Biennial Invitational in Albany, NY. Her notable solo shows were hosted at the Dacia and A.I.R. Galleries in New York City, the Fletcher Gallery in Woodstock, NY and at Studio D’Ars in Milan, Italy.
International locations that have hosted Ms. Bachner’s work include the Roessler Gallery in Ravensburg, Germany, the Cita da Castello in Italy, the Articblue Gallery in Ibiza, Spain, the M.U.S.E.E. Cavour in Bologna, Italy, the NY Arts Gallery in Beijing, China and a 3-person exhibition at the Max Planck Foundation for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, at which time she and her co-exhibitors were awarded a travel grant by the U.S. Embassy, Berlin. She has shown in numerous universities and academic institutions in the U.S. Bachner’s art resides in both private collections and public permanent collections, notably the Bob Blackburn Printmaking Collection at the Library of Congress, the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, the Southwest Minnesota State Museum, Queensborough Community College, part of the CUNY, the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas, NY and several non-profit hospital art collections in New York City, notably Columbia Presbyterian, Langone Medical Center, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital and the Health and Hospitals Arts, New York City. She is the creator of A Time to Gather Stones, the short movie and released an illustrated book Behind Closed Eyes.
For her achievements in modern art, Ms. Bachner has received the 2010 Sally Jacobs/Phoebe Towbin and the 1991 Dan Gottschalk Award from the Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, numerous awards from the international nonprofit Pen and Brush/NYC, including in 1995 the Breth-Borkman and Margaret Sussman Awards.
In 1984 she won a concourse award from the Art Students League, where she was a recipient of the Margaret Ferguson Merit Scholarship in 1983. In 1999 she received the Lorenzo IL Magnifico Medal and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the city of Florence, Italy at their Biennale Exhibition.