US Assemblage Artist Betye Saar Dies at Nearly 100

Just before her 100th birthday, US artist Betye Saar died on Sunday. She became known for assemblages on Black identity.

Published: 28 July 2026, 14:23 Uhr

Rediscovered only in old age: the artist Betye Saar, who has just died at nearly 100 years old. Photo: David Sprague/ap

By Beate Scheder

For her most famous work, "The Liberation of Aunt Jemima," the artist Betye Saar used the advertising figure of a US breakfast cereal brand as a starting point in 1972: a stereotypically staged African American "Mammy" figure meant to entice the purchase of pancake mix and waffle syrup. In Saar's assemblage, cobbled together from a notebook holder and other everyday materials, the racist caricature transforms into a freedom fighter. Aunt Jemima's smile is twisted into a grotesque grimace; in one hand the figure holds a broom, with the other she leans on a rifle, and under her arm the pull ring of a hand grenade is visible.

For Saar's artistic practice, "The Liberation of Aunt Jemima" is prototypical. From things from thrift stores, found objects, family heirlooms, mystical objects, and historical ephemera, the artist — born in Los Angeles in 1926 and initially studying at Pasadena City College, later at the University of California — assembled highly political works. In doing so, she questioned concepts such as race and gender as well as the historical memory of her time.

In a conversation with Yilmaz Dziewior and Carla Cugini from the Museum Ludwig, conducted in 2020 ahead of the award of the 26th Wolfgang Hahn Prize, she explained how she once discovered her artistic technique. After visiting an exhibition by Joseph Cornell, an artist known for assemblages, at the Pasadena Art Museum, she — who had previously focused on drawing and printmaking — began to adopt his working method and process objects she had already collected:

"Suddenly I knew I could do something with the things. I had all kinds of material at home. That was the moment when I said to myself: 'Aha, I can keep this stuff because it's for my art.'"

In the 1970s, Saar was part of the emerging "Black Arts Movement," where she held a special position as a woman. Like so many, and especially Black female artists, she was only rediscovered in old age. In 2019, the Museum of Modern Art purchased her early work "Black Girl's Window" (1969) — an old wooden window frame that the artist had fitted with prints — and presented it to a broad public for the first time.

In 2021, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2025, the artist herself, together with a group of curators and researchers, founded the "Betye Saar Legacy Group" for the care of her work.

Last Sunday, Saar died in Los Angeles. This week she would have turned 100 years old.