Amy Trachtenberg was born in 1955 in Pittsburgh, PA. The artist's work spans a multidisciplinary practice grounded in painting that includes sculpture, installation, public commissions, and collaborative works in theater and literary zones. Utilizing a range of techniques, Trachtenberg's work references textiles and found objects erasing divides between painting and sculpture. Beyond their abstract leanings, the tension between politics and poetics is the driving force combining the primacy of color, the handcrafted, and the celebratory function of pattern and ornament.
Trachtenberg’s work has been exhibited at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, Anglim Gilbert Gallery, The Luggage Store, Brian Gross Fine Art in San Francisco, The San José Museum of Quilts and Textiles, and The Monterey Museum of Art. Work has been shown and is held in the collections of The Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, The Achenbach Collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The San José Museum of Art, The Crocker Museum, Sacramento, The De Menil Collection, New York, and The Haitian Embassy, Paris. Trachtenberg has created site-specific installations, including the ceramic tile passenger platform for BART in Silicon Valley, California, the façade at the C.G. Jung Institute in San Francisco, and the interior of Hillview Branch Library in San Jose, California.
Trachtenberg has been awarded residencies at Lucas Artists at Montalvo Arts Center, KALA Arts, The Mesa Refuge, and the Symposium of Contemporary Art in Angoulême, France. She was a 2023 Fellow at LABA Bay, a Laboratory for Jewish Culture where she explored the theme of Taboo through studying Torah and Talmud. She received a Bachelor of Arts in French and Liberal Studies from California State University, Sonoma and the Diplôme des Arts Plastiques from L’Ecole Nationale Superièure des Beaux-Arts in Paris where she lived for six years. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery since 2021.
