Marcia Hafif (1929-2018) was born in Pomona, California. After graduating from Pomona College in 1951, she settled in Rome, where she remained for almost eight years. Returning to California in 1969, and leaving painting for a time to experiment with film, photography, and sound installation, she completed an MFA at the University of California at Irvine. For the past four decades she divided her time between Laguna Beach and New York City. Hafif’s work has been exhibited extensively in museums, notably at MoMA PS 1; Haus für Konstruktive und Konkrete Kunst, Zurich; FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon; and MAMCO, Geneva. Hafif was the subject of solo survey exhibitions at Laguna Art Museum, 2015; the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 2017; and Kunsthaus Baselland, 2017. Surveys of her work in film and video have taken place at Lenbachhaus, Munich, in 2018, and the Tate, London in 2019. She died in 2018, a few months before the opening exhibition Marcia Hafif: A Place Apart at Pomona College Museum of Art.
