LONDON.- Over the last fifty years American-born, Berlin-based artist Dorothy Iannone has produced a bold and revealing body of work expressing her feelings, thoughts and experiences through painting, drawing, poetry and song. For her first major exhibition in the UK, she has brought together her early work from the 70s and 80s alongside newer pieces made over the last six years. Iannone’s portrayals of male and female sexuality celebrate the joy of her most intimate relationships while subverting traditional gender stereotypes of dominance and control. Dorothy Iannone: Innocent and Aware runs at Camden Arts Centre London from 8 March until 5 May 2013 and admission is free.

Through vibrant paintings, sculptures and video boxes her works unite partly clothed and naked figures in states of physical union and ecstasy on bright psychedelic backgrounds of flora, mandalas and biomorphic patterns. Recalling classical Indian erotic art, Egyptian frescoes and Byzantine mosaics, Iannone’s intricate and expressive work communicates her personal narrative, passionate love affairs and lifetime pursuit of ‘ecstatic union’ through transcendence and spirituality.

A self-taught artist, Iannone started painting in 1959 and in 1961 took the US government to court after customs officials confiscated her copy of Henry Miller’s well-known novel ‘Tropic of Cancer’ at the airport. Her actions led to the government lifting the ban on all his novels in the US. After a transformative meeting with German artist Dieter Roth on a trip to Iceland in 1967, described by her in An Icelandic Saga, an emotionally charged series of words and pictures, she left America and travelled to Europe where she has lived and worked ever since.

Throughout her career Iannone has developed a distinctive style, producing works which provoke the viewer to consider the nature of love and spirituality as it related to human experience and pleasure.

Dorothy Iannone was born in 1933 in Boston, Massachusetts; she currently lives and works in Berlin. Since she started painting in 1959 she has had numerous solo exhibitions including Sunny Days and Sweetness, Peres Projects, Berlin (2010), Lioness, New Museum, New York (2009); Dorothy Iannone, Anton Kern, New York (2009); Follow Me, September, Berlin (2008); She’s A Freedom Fighter, Air de Paris, Paris (2007) Seek the Extremes, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2006); Dorothy Iannone, The Wrong Gallery at Tate Modern, London (2005). Group exhibitions include Météorologies mentales, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (2012); X, Gio Marconi gallery, Milan (2010); Seductive Subversion: Contemporary Women Artists 1958-1968, Brooklyn Museum, New York; Power Up- Women Pop Artists, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (both 2010); Heaven, 2nd Athens Biennale; rebelle. Art and feminism 1969-2009, Museum voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem (both 2009); Bodypoliticx, Witte de With, Rotterdam; Day For Night, Whitney Biennial, New York (2006) and Dieter Roth & Dorothy Iannone, Sprengel Museum, Hanover (2005).