PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Bridgette Mayer Gallery announces the addition of Dina Wind’s estate to its roster of represented gallery artists. Wind passed away in September 2014, leaving behind a rich archive of several hundred sculptures, installations, and paintings. It is the gallery's hope that through this show they will begin to reintroduce her work to the public and explore her contributions to the Philadelphia art scene and to late 20th century abstraction and assemblage.

Originally from Israel, Wind came to the United States in 1963. She began her artistic career creating abstract expressionist paintings, and in the early 1980s switched to making metal sculpture, the work she is most recognized for today. Building from the long tradition of collage and assemblage in 20th century modern art, with clear references to the work of Pablo Picasso, David Smith, and Robert Rauschenberg, Wind’s creative process involved the appropriation and aesthetic transformation of found objects and scrap metal. The resulting sculptural works achieve balance between oppositional elements such as order and chaos, minimal and maximal, masculine and feminine, and harshness and whimsy.

A selection of over 20 of Wind’s sculptures from the 1980s and 90s are on view in the gallery, with a main installation of wall-mounted pieces presented in the vault room [ Racing Barracudas , 1997]. The gallery published a catalog to accompany the exhibition which also includes a number of her larger outdoor sculptures that are featured on the gallery’s website. Her works are accompanied by the exhibition “Illuminations, Jogged Perspective, and Banded Measure,” featuring new work by gallery artist Paul Oberst.

Wind earned her B.A. from the Hebrew University [Jerusalem, Israel], M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania [Philadelphia, PA], and a certificate in art appreciation from the Barnes Foundation when it was located at its former campus in Merion, PA. She additionally studied under the sculptor Leon Sitarchik. She had numerous solo exhibitions in both the Philadelphia area and New York throughout her career and was a longtime member of both Nexus Gallery in Philadelphia and Veridian Gallery in New York. Wind was awarded First Prize in Sculpture at the 2000 Art of the State: Pennsylvania annual juried show. Her work has been acquired by international collections such as Fields Associates [Tokyo, Japan] and The Interdisciplinary Center [Herzlia, Israel], as well as national collections including the Woodmere Art Museum [Philadelphia, PA], The West Collection, SEI [Oaks, PA], and the Hechinger Collection [Landover, MD]. In addition to her work as an artist, Wind and her husband Jerry were also very active patrons of the arts in Philadelphia. They funded the now-named Wind Challenge for the Fleisher Art Memorial and have supported the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s efforts to highlight art’s role in social transformation through the ongoing Wind Power of Art series.