Errance

Betty Schmetz

Betty Schmetz created this lithograph after her ink drawing of 1970 titled "Eléments errants dans l'océan cosmique". Like several of her works from this time, Schmetz plays with the convergence of astronomical and terrestrial landscapes, rendering them in black and white to focus the viewer's attention on the shapes and textures of the abstracted environments.

This piece was a part of the Atlantic Richfield Company's corporate art collection. Now known simply as ARCO, the oil company was one of the largest in the world in the late 1960s, when it's founder, Robert O. Anderson appointed Herbert Bayer as its Art and Design Consultant. The Bauhaus artist was soon overseeing the largest corporate art collection in existence, and by his death in 1985, it included over 30,000 works nationwide.