MARLENE YU

Artist. Pioneer. Environmental Visionary.

Marlene Tseng Yu is more than an artist—she is a force of nature. A trailblazer in the environmental green movement in art and one of the few women painting on a monumental scale, Yu is an internationally acclaimed abstract expressionist known for her vibrant, large-scale, nature-inspired paintings—powerful canvases ranging from 1.5 feet to a staggering 56 feet long and up to 22 feet high.

Her work bridges realism and abstraction, East and West, micro/macro perspectives, nature and imagination—offering a striking and urgent reminder of what is worth preserving. As a curator of international group exhibitions centered on nature across diverse media—including dance, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and photography—she founded the Rainforest Art Foundation in 2001 to unite artists globally around a shared love for and commitment to the environment.

Born in 1937 in Taiwan, Yu earned her BFA from National Taiwan Normal University in 1960 and later moved to the U.S., receiving her MFA from the University of Colorado in 1967. She taught art to high schoolers in Taiwan and to college students at Denver University.  She lived and worked in SoHo, New York City for nearly four decades and continues her practice today in Long Island City.

With over 80 solo exhibitions and more than 5,000 works spanning over 35 series, her art has been collected and exhibited extensively across Europe, Asia, and the United States. Her work has been reviewed in nine languages and featured in over 300 publications, including ARTFORUM, Art in America, ArtNews, and The Today Show with Barbara Walters.