Lani Irwin was born in 1947. She received her BA and MFA in painting from American University. Her first one person show was at the Washington Project for the Arts in 1976. She had one-person exhibitions at Gallery K in Washington DC, Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery in NY, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, Colorado, The Katzen Museum, Washington, D.C., Bachelier Cardonsky gallery, Kent, Connecticut and Polo Museale di Gualdo Tadino. Her work was represented by Gallery K in Washington D.C. from 1981 to the closing of the gallery in 2003 and by Katharina Rich Perlow from 1996 through 2008.
She has shown in numerous group exhibitions in the U.S.A., Italy, and the U.K. from 1974 to the present. She was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 1995 and the McMillan Stewart Endowed Chair in Painting, Maryland Institute College of Art 2009-10. In addition to the many private collections around the world, Irwin’s work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Huntington Museum of Art and the Museo Internazionale della Donna nell’Arte in Scontrone, Italy. She has lived and worked in Italy since 1987.
