Kathleen Clement — American-born painter, photographer, cultural documentarian and passionate advocate for the natural world — has passed away at the age of 97, her family reported earlier this month. For more than six decades, she made Mexico City her home, creating a body of work that bridged nations, artistic traditions and generations.
Born in 1928 in Ord, Nebraska, Clement grew up during the era of the Dust Bowl, a formative experience that shaped her lifelong sensitivity to landscape and environmental fragility. As a child she witnessed both hardship and wonder — famously recalling the awe of a whale that arrived by train in the plains of Nebraska, an image that stayed with her as a symbol of displacement and marvel. She graduated from Ord High School in 1946, studied at Milton College in Wisconsin, and earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1950. She later pursued studies in art criticism with Maestro T. Joysmith and studied museography in Paris.
In 1960, Clement emigrated to Mexico City, where she would live for the remainder of her life. Settling in San Ángel, she became part of a vibrant creative community that included artists such as Juan O’Gorman, Gunther Gerzo, José Luis Cuevas, Mathias Goeritz, Helen Escobedo, Leonora Carrington and Elizabeth Catlett. Among her early solo exhibitions, her 1969 presentation at the Museo Casa del Risco, Centro Cultural Isidro Fabela, marked an important milestone.
Clement’s art evolved from lyrical realism into impressionistic and ultimately abstract compositions, achieved through multiple layers of transparent paint. Her work was deeply rooted in the flora of the Valley of Mexico and carried an unmistakable ecological conscience. As Sylvia Navarrete Bouzard, the former director of Mexico City’s Museum of Modern Art, observed:
“Nature is triumphant in Kathleen Clement’s painting; leafy, nascent, free, but at the same time fragile and perishable … In the manner of the botanical drawing of past centuries … Kathleen Clement’s painting acquires the value of testimony — and warning — it makes us rediscover organic life and natural beauty that surround us and that we no longer notice and reminds us of the imperative of preserving them.”
Influenced by Japanese line, Mexican color, Chinese porcelain, and textiles from India and Africa, she created works inspired by fabric and stitching, sometimes incorporating glass and mirrors, and even sewn elements into her paintings. She was also an accomplished portraitist and photographer; her photographs of Mexico City graffiti appeared in Zapatista Graffiti: A Photographic Essay (2003) with a text by Jennifer Clement.
Over a career spanning more than seventy-five years, Clement mounted more than fifty solo exhibitions and participated in more than one hundred group shows across Mexico, the United States, Europe and beyond. Her work received international recognition. She was awarded prizes at the International Biennial of Humor and Satire in Gabrovo, Bulgaria (1989 and 1991), received the International Culture Prize of Parma, Italy, and participated in the 1994 Monterrey Museum Biennial. In recognition of her lifelong artistic achievement and cultural contribution, she was also honored with the 2025 Elizabeth Heywood Wyman Award.
Clement’s works are held in significant public and private collections, including the Museum of Nebraska Art; the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil; and the Library of Alexandria in Egypt; and in prominant private collections such as those of the Jordan Black family, Elena Poniatowska and Yusef Komunyaaka. She was included in numerous major publications and reference volumes, among them Who’s Who of American Art and 20th Century North American Women Artists.
Kathleen Clement is remembered for her luminous canvases, her devotion to Mexico’s endangered landscapes, and her unwavering belief in art as witness. She leaves behind family, friends, fellow artists, students and admirers in both the United States and Mexico, as well as generations of viewers moved by her layered, radiant meditations on nature’s endurance and fragility.
Mexico News Daily
