Josefina Auslender: Drawing Myself Free
ON VIEW THROUGH MAY 31st, 2026

at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine
Curated by Cassandra Mesick Braun

This exhibition is the first-ever museum retrospective of drawings by Josefina Auslender, whose work in graphite, colored pencil, and ink spans decades and continents. Born in Buenos Aires in 1934, Auslender explored her passion for art from an early age before committing herself to the medium of drawing in the 1970s. Josefina Auslender: Drawing Myself Free features more than 100 drawings created in Argentina and the United States that collectively reflect her enduring interest in building new worlds through the visual languages of abstraction and Surrealism. The act of drawing is, as Auslender explains with unabashed joy, “like going on a spaceship to the stars.” It is a journey she has continued to pursue for more than sixty years while navigating loss, war, trauma, and diaspora—all in pursuit of the freedom that comes with expressing one’s true self through artmaking.

This exhibition is organized with support from the Riley P. Brewster ’77 Fund for the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and International Artists Manifest.

For information on individual artworks, please contact Sarah Bouchard Gallery. A full-color print catalogue will be available this Fall.

ALL installation images are courtesy of Bowdoin College Museum of Art, with photography by Tim Greenway.

Video

“Drawing Herself Free”: A Conversation with Josefina Auslender
A conversation between Josefina Auslender, Cassandra Mesick Braun, and Sarah Bouchard.
January 29th, 2026

JOSEFINA AUSLENDER. Los Caprichos (01). 36.5” x 27.5” (framed). Graphite on paper. 1983.

PHOTO CREDIT: Luc Demers

JOSEFINA AUSLENDER in her studio in Buenos Aires. c. 1970s.

JOSEFINA AUSLENDER is a Latin American artist currently based in the United States. She graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires in 1956. During her time in Buenos Aires, her work was shown in many of the most prominent galleries, including Galeria Bonino and Julia Lublain’s Galeria del Retiro. She exhibited her work at the Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires and had a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires in which she exhibited 54 works from her series Los Caprichos. She was invited several times to the Miro Foundation Biennial and had a solo show at Galerie Urbane in Madrid. She also exhibited in many group shows in Argentina with artists like Enio Iommi, Maria Juana Heras-Velasco and Alfredo Llito. Auslender’s mentors were Manuel Espinoza and Billy Witelow. 

Auslender moved to the United States in the late 1980s, setting up a home in Maine. While she continued working, she did not pursue the level of representation she secured while in Argentina. The language barrier and other factors made it challenging for her to receive the same level of attention. Even so, she has had multiple solo exhibitions and her work has been acquired by a number of Maine institutions, most recently the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. She is now 90 years old and still making work!

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JOSEFINA AUSLENDER. From the series La Ciudad. 15.75” x 11.75”. Graphite on paper. 1974.PHOTO CREDIT: Luc Demers

JOSEFINA AUSLENDER. From the series La Ciudad. 15.75” x 11.75”. Graphite on paper. 1974.

PHOTO CREDIT: Luc Demers