Lee Bontecou (January 15, 1931 – November 8, 2022) was an American sculptor and printmaker and a pioneer figure in the New York art world.

[1] As a little girl, Bontecou spent time at the family's cabin in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, where she first experimenting with sculpture, whittling animals out of wood.

They consist of welded steel frames covered with recycled canvas and industrial materials (such as conveyor belts or mail sacks) and other found objects.

Art critic Arthur Danto described them as "fierce", reminiscent of 17th-century scientist Robert Hooke's Micrographia, lying "at the intersection of magnified insects, battle masks, and armored chariots...”.

[6] She was one of the first female artists[1] to be exhibited at Leo Castelli's art gallery in the 1960s, alongside Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Robert Rauschenberg.

[7] One of the largest examples of her work is located in the lobby of the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, which was commissioned by the architect Philip Johnson.

[9] In 2014, her drawings were exhibited in Lee Bontecou: Drawn Worlds,[10] organized by The Menil Collection, which traveled to the Princeton University Art Museum.

The exhibition was curated by Joan Banach and Laura Stamps, and accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by Hannibal (Dutch) and Koenig Books, London (English).

[13] Her work has been characterized by references to the synergy between nature and fiction, resulting naturalistically rendered creatures, with grotesquely morphed features.

In her drawings, she developed a process in the late 1950s of using an oxyacetylene torch to produce a carbon spray from the flame, resulting in an "airbrushed" look and deep saturated blacks that she took to her sculptural work.

Bontecou's image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.