Emilie benes brzezinski born
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Many of her works are in the Czech Republic, the country of her family’s origin. In 1961, Emilie married Zbigniew Brzezinski, a foreign policy scholar, political scientist, and National Security Advisor to President Carter. Outside of the nation’s capital, Brzezinski sculptures can also be found in Chicago at The Society for Arts as well as in New Jersey at the respected Grounds for Sculpture park.
Her work remains as completely unique, and is a manifestation of her heritage, her love of nature, her engineering intuition, and her creative and aesthetic mind. She graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in Art History in 1953. Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe, dedicated segments on July 25 and August 5, 2022, to honoring her mother's life as a sculptor, emphasizing her independence and artistic resilience following the 2017 death of her husband, Zbigniew Brzezinski.[27][28] The McLean Project for the Arts, where Brzezinski had been a longtime supporter, issued a statement expressing sorrow over the loss of a key figure in their community.[29]No public funeral details were widely reported, with focus shifting to preserving her legacy through ongoing exhibitions of her wood sculptures.[30]
Legacy and influence
Artistic contributions
Emilie Benes Brzezinski's primary contribution to sculpture lies in her monumental wood works, where she employed chainsaws, axes, and chisels to carve felled tree trunks, preserving and enhancing their inherent organic forms while revealing latent expressive potential.[2][11] This approach embodied the modernist principle of "truth to materials," exploiting wood's natural twists, grains, and textures to create towering assemblages that evoked human emotions and narratives, such as grief in Lament (2013, red oak) or familial bonds in Family Trees (2010).[2][11]Her process involved a dialogic engagement with the wood, uncovering hidden shapes through iterative carving that balanced mass, movement, and site-specific dynamics, as seen in public commissions like Children's Arch (1991, gum wood, 12 feet high), her first major outdoor installation.[2][11] Brzezinski's thematic focus drew from nature's vitality, classical mythology (e.g., Apollo and Daphne, 1994, boxelder), and personal experiences, including Central European heritage and family life, integrating elements like photography or bronze casting in later works such as Arch in Flight at the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C.[2][11]Over four decades, Brzezinski's evolution from early experiments with resins, latex, and wood fibers in the 1970s to large-scale wood tableaux advanced expressive abstraction in environmental sculpture, with installations like Prague Titans along the Vltava River and Broken Blocks at the National Gallery in Prague demonstrating her international reach.[2][11] Her approximately 70 exhibitions since the 1980s, including retrospectives at the Kreeger Museum (2014) and the "Natural Fact" survey (2016), underscored her role in pushing boundaries of materiality and form, influencing perceptions of wood as a dynamic medium for contemporary narrative sculpture.[2][11]Recognition and enduring impact
Emilie Brzezinski received formal recognition for her wood sculptures later in her career, culminating in first prize for sculpture at the 2003 Florence Biennale, where her installation featured monumental tree trunks embedded with life-size family photographs.[8] She mounted approximately 70 exhibitions since the 1980s across Europe and North America, including sites in Prague, Florence, and various U.S.venues, showcasing her chainsaw-carved forms inspired by natural motifs.[4]In 2021, the McLean Project for the Arts honored Brzezinski through a virtual benefit auction, where she donated numerous pieces, leading to a major gift of her work to the organization for ongoing exhibitions and educational programs.[4][31] A 2022 retrospective, "Emilie Brzezinski: Natural Fact," surveyed her four-decade career, highlighting towering chainsaw-sculpted arrangements that blended organic abstraction with environmental themes.[11]Her sculptures entered permanent collections in public institutions, private holdings, and museums across Spain, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, and the United States, ensuring broad dissemination of her style characterized by large-scale, unrefined wood interventions.[32] Posthumously, following her death in 2022, institutions like the McLean Project for the Arts continued to advance her legacy through dedicated displays and programming that emphasize creativity's role in personal resilience amid health challenges.[29][31] Brzezinski's self-taught approach, developed without formal training after family-raising years, demonstrated the viability of unconventional tools like the chainsaw for monumental sculpture, influencing perceptions of accessibility in wood-based contemporary art.[15][8]![Emilie Brzezinski's "Cherry Pantomime" wood sculpture][float-right]Her enduring impact lies in bridging domestic life with professional artistry, as her large-scale installations—often requiring significant logistical effort—gained placement in high-profile settings despite the medium's transport challenges, inspiring subsequent generations of sculptors focused on natural materials and intuitive processes.[14] Themes of nature's resilience in her work, drawn from personal adversity including Parkinson's disease, positioned her oeuvre as a testament to sustained creative output over adversity, with ongoing exhibits like planned posthumous shows reinforcing this narrative.[4][33]
ABOUT
Born in 1932 in Geneva, Switzerland, Emilie Benes Brzezinski immigrated to the United States and grew up in California.
The sculpture of Emilie Brzezinski is the embodiment of the extension of life even when the life withers, and appears seemingly unimportant.
To quote Emilie from the Washington Times in 2005; “I consider my tree forms to be metaphors of humanity and its struggle for survival.”
Emilie Brzezinski began her art career in the 1970s working with a variety of media, including resins, latex, and wood fiber.
These vessels are metaphors for gathering and celebration but also reflect her keen interest in the transformation of something dead and destroyed into something beautifully preserved that will constantly evolve and change.
"Nature has a grand design, but its manifestations unfold in imperfection and specificity.
They had three children; Ian, Mark and Mika.
Within the last two decades, Brzezinski has had several gallery and museum installations both in the United States and overseas. It was during this employment, around 1954–1955, that she met Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish émigré scholar and her future husband, through professional interactions in the library's scholarly community.[1][8]Following their marriage in June 1955, Brzezinski shifted priorities to family responsibilities, including raising three children born between 1963 and 1967, while engaging in informal artistic practice at home without pursuing formal employment or public exhibitions.
[11] Additional venues encompassed The Phillips Collection, Grounds For Sculpture, Anna Maria College's monumental indoor display, and thematic shows like Lament (Kempner Gallery, 2016), Chainsaw Progression, and Family Trees.[15][19] Her oeuvre is documented in the monograph The Lure of the Forest: Sculpture 1979- (2014), which catalogs her evolution toward large-scale, site-responsive installations.[20]
Personal life
Marriage and partnership
Emilie Anna Beneš married Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish-American political scientist and foreign policy expert, on June 11, 1955, at St.Ignatius Roman Catholic Church in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.[12] The ceremony, which included a nuptial mass officiated by Rev. Paul A. Curtin, united the grandniece of former Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš with the son of a Polish diplomat.[12] At the time, Brzezinski was completing his Ph.D.
Emilie has exhibited in the United States and Eastern Europe, particularly in the Czech Republic where her family is from. These cardiac incidents required medical intervention and recovery periods, further straining her resilience in the wake of her husband Zbigniew Brzezinski's death in 2017.[25]
Passing and immediate aftermath
Emilie Beneš Brzezinski died on July 22, 2022, at her home in Jupiter, Florida, at the age of 90.[1][5] The cause was complications from Parkinson's disease, as confirmed by her daughter Mika Brzezinski.[1]Her passing prompted immediate tributes from family and artistic circles.This period marked a hiatus from structured professional roles, as she managed household duties amid her husband's rising academic and diplomatic career.[12][13]
Artistic career
Entry into sculpture
Emilie Benes Brzezinski initiated her artistic career in the early 1970s, after completing her fine arts education at Wellesley College in 1953 and subsequent studies at the Boston Museum School in 1954, followed by an apprenticeship ending in 1956.[3] Her initial works employed experimental media such as resins, latex, and wood fiber, centered on expressive themes inspired by nature.[10][2]Early forays into sculpture involved small-scale wooden forms, including a 12 cm depiction of a waterfowl and a fist-sized frog, where she adapted to the material's inherent flaws like knots and voids to inform the final shape.[8] These pieces reflected influences from childhood hikes along Oregon beaches, during which she collected driftwood, fostering an affinity for organic forms.[2]By the mid-1970s, Brzezinski transitioned to monumental wood sculpture, employing chainsaws, axes, and chisels to hew felled tree trunks into towering structures that retained evidence of tool marks and natural contours.[13][10] This method amplified the wood's essential character, drawing from her Czech heritage and viewing the forms as metaphors for human resilience and survival.[3] Solo exhibitions in Washington, D.C., and New York during this decade established her presence in the art world.[3]
Techniques and materials
Brzezinski began her artistic practice in the 1970s experimenting with synthetic and organic composites, including resins, latex, and wood fiber, to explore expressive forms inspired by nature.[11] She developed a particular affinity for resin, valuing its transparent solidity in contrast to wood's opacity, and employed techniques such as carving solid resin blocks and casting liquid resin into molds formed from tree bark to capture and transform organic textures.[14]Over time, her work evolved toward monumental wood sculptures carved directly from felled tree trunks, utilizing hardwoods like red oak, cherry, walnut, maple, gum, boxelder, and willow.[8][2] She sourced materials from local properties, such as maple trunks costing around $800 each, selecting logs with distinctive histories like stunted growth or lightning damage to inform the final form.[8]Her primary techniques involved subtractive carving, employing an arsenal of six Stihl chainsaws for varied cuts—from rough removal with a Model 360 to finer rip chains—alongside axes, chisels, a Polish wooden mallet, and occasional fire for shaping.[8][14] Brzezinski worked without gloves but with earmuffs for safety, hollowing trunks, sanding surfaces, and adapting to inherent flaws like knots or splits, which she integrated into the sculpture's anatomy rather than concealing.[8] This process emphasized a dialogic approach, preserving the wood's natural gestures, twists, and age lines while amplifying them through expressive tool marks that evolved from utilitarian gouges to fluid, emotional incisions.[2]Major works, exhibitions, and themes
![Emilie Brzezinski's Cherry Pantomime sculpture][float-right]Emilie Brzezinski's sculptures predominantly feature monumental wood forms carved from tree trunks using chainsaws, axes, and chisels, preserving and amplifying the natural contours and textures of the wood to evoke the essence of forests and organic growth.[13] Her thematic focus centers on nature's resilience, sustainability, and the interplay between human intervention and raw materiality, often reflecting a modernist commitment to "truth to materials" while highlighting environmental stewardship.[11] Earlier experiments with latex, resin, fibers, and bronze gave way to wood as her primary medium by the late 1970s, underscoring recurring motifs of transformation and the latent power within natural forms.[15]Among her major works, Cherry Pantomime (wood, overall dimensions approximately 118 x 36 x 24 inches) stands out as a rhythmic, multi-part composition that captures dynamic, pantomimic gestures through contoured cherry wood elements, exemplifying her technique of revealing inherent tree shapes.[16]Lament (2016), a towering piece displayed at Kempner Gallery in New York, embodies themes of loss and endurance, carved to suggest mournful yet steadfast natural figures.[17] Other significant sculptures include High Point, a 15-foot oakinstallation evoking vertical aspiration, and Children's Arch (1991, gum wood, 12 feet), a gateway form symbolizing passage and growth, both featured in her career survey.[11] Works like Maple Cascade, Prague Titans, and Mother Earth further illustrate her exploration of cascading forms, mythic scale, and maternal earth motifs, often sourced from local Virginia trees to emphasize regional ecology.[18]Brzezinski's exhibitions spanned over seven decades, beginning with solo shows in Washington, D.C., and New York in the 1970s, followed by approximately 70 presentations since the 1980s across North America, Europe (including Prague and Florence), and Eastern Europe.[4][10] Key solo exhibitions include The Lure of the Forest at The Kreeger Museum (2014), showcasing her wood sculptures' fascination with arboreal forms, and Natural Fact at Mason Exhibitions (2016), a 40-year retrospective highlighting chainsaw-carved tableaux and early material experiments.Many of her works are in the Czech Republic, the country of her family’s origin. She started her art career in the 1970s with a series of solo shows in Washington, D.C. and New York. Outside the nation’s capital, Brzezinski sculptures can be found in Chicago at The Society for Arts as well as in New Jersey at the respected Grounds for Sculpture park.
Her daughter, Mika Brzezinski, noted that the isolation and transitions necessitated by the pandemic— including relocation from Virginia—dramatically impacted her overall health, intensifying these neurodegenerative symptoms.[25][26]Additionally, she survived two heart attacks in the years leading up to 2021, events that underscored her cardiovascular vulnerabilities amid advancing age and neurological decline.
In 1954, she received a scholarship to the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts and attended classes at the Castle Hill School in Boston, focusing on practical skills in drawing and sculpture.[10][12]She then took a position at Harvard University's Littauer Library, handling cataloging and research support duties in a academic environment aligned with her art history background.
In the United States, her bronze “Arch in Flight” stands just two blocks from the White House in front of the Federal Reserve building on New York Avenue, and her most monumental work to date, “Lament”, greets visitors in the front circle of the Kreeger Museum. at Harvard University and beginning an academic career, while Beneš had recently graduated from Wellesley College and pursued studies in fine arts.[12]The marriage lasted over six decades, until Brzezinski's death on May 26, 2017, at age 89.[21] During this period, Brzezinski rose to prominence, serving as National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981, which placed the couple at the center of Washington diplomatic and political circles.[1] Emilie Brzezinski maintained her independence as an artist, prioritizing her sculpture alongside family responsibilities rather than fully immersing in the social obligations typical of political spouses.[8] She later reflected on this balance as essential to her resilience, noting that her husband's scholarly focus allowed space for her creative work amid the demands of his career.[4] No other partnerships or marriages are recorded for either spouse.[1]
Family and children
Emilie Benes Brzezinski and Zbigniew Brzezinski had three children: sons Ian and Mark, and daughter Mika.[3][7]Ian Brzezinski served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO policy from 2001 to 2005.[6]Mark Brzezinski held the position of U.S.ambassador to Poland from 2022 to 2025 and subsequently served as ambassador to Sweden.[1]Mika Brzezinski is a journalist and co-host of the MSNBC program Morning Joe.[1][3]
Social and political associations
Emilie Brzezinski's social associations were predominantly influenced by her marriage to Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1958, which provided entree into Washington's political and diplomatic circles, particularly during his service as National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from January 20, 1977, to January 20, 1981.[1] This connection facilitated interactions with high-level government officials, foreign diplomats, and policy influencers, as the couple hosted gatherings at their Washington residence that blended artistic and strategic discussions.[1]No records indicate direct political activism, donations, or formal affiliations on her part; her public profile centered on sculpture rather than partisan engagement.[22] Her familial ties, including descent from Czech diplomat Eduard Beneš (president of Czechoslovakia from 1935–1938 and 1945–1948), aligned with anti-communist sentiments prevalent in émigré networks, though she did not publicly espouse political views.[23] Post-White House, her social orbit continued to intersect with foreign policy elites through family, such as sons Ian (a U.S.defense official) and Mark (a diplomat), but remained secondary to her artistic pursuits.[24]
Later years and death
Health challenges
In her later years, Emilie Benes Brzezinski grappled with Parkinson's disease, a progressive neurological disorder that impaired her mobility and independence despite her continued artistic pursuits.Her influences are varied.